Cast Off
by Haleine Delail
Summary: The Doctor is staying out all night and won't say why. He is having bouts of terrible illness and is exhibiting some dramatic mood swings with erratic, semi-destructive behavior. Martha is feeling shut-out, rejected, confused, but above all, frightened. What has got into him? And can she help him stop it before someone actually gets hurt?
1. Chapter 1

**Hello again! Something new has arisen, and I'm kind of excited about it! But as it turns out, it is different from some of my previous work, so here are a couple of ****thoughts/warnings: ****a) ****The chapter-lengths are inconsistent, and generally a lot shorter than I normally like. This will probably change in the second half of the story, but who knows? b) Unfortunately n****either the Doctor nor Martha are entirely likeable in this piece. Hopefully their motivation is clear, if not entirely ethical, and/or will become clear as the story comes to a climax!**

**This first chapter is more of a prologue, planting the seeds for what will begin to happen after this point. As such, I can't say that it's a true cliffhanger...**

**As always, please leave comments and I really hope you enjoy this! **

* * *

1 (Prologue)

She sat thinking, trying to wrap her mind around the last few hours, but she felt she was in a vacuum, grasping at nothing. This life, this mad old life, travelling with the Doctor - sometimes it could do this to her. Sometimes she really wondered what it was all for, and why she should bother to cling to anything when it would just be taken away or die, or try to dump her back at her flat with no warning at all. Part of this sense of futility, she was used to.

But the difference today was: the Doctor was sitting right next to her, also emptily trying to make sense of it. The barrenness was all-consuming today. And it wasn't really barrenness; it was a harrowing grief that would not leave them alone even after the threat had gone, a sensation that something malevolent had got inside them.

For the Doctor, that was almost literally true. He had been possessed by a sun, and seen the despair within. He had looked into it, and it had crept inside his body and brain. When it left him, it seemed to sap his energy, pull a little of his strength and Doctor-ness with it. The effects were temporary, but today, that knowledge was of no help.

For Martha's part, the experience of seeing the Doctor so back-to-the-wall frightened was something she was likely to have nightmares about for weeks to come. Not to mention, the experience of drifting toward an angry sun in an unprotected escape pod with a stranger. She and the Doctor had both come within a hair's breadth of being swallowed up, incinerated by a planet-sized churning mass of gas and fire. Life snuffed out in the blink of an eye.

Granted, it wasn't the first near-miss they'd had... this was their life. They had just come off the debacle with Richard Lazarus, and Martha had nearly fallen from the bell tower onto the stone floor of Southwark Cathedral. The Doctor had been nearly decapitated by the pincers of a crustaceous monster that had once been human.

Before that, they had been nearly exterminated by Daleks, electrocuted by a gammon ray, eaten by Macra, swallowed up by the howling wilderness of the Carrionites and suffocated to death on the moon.

But something about the experience on the Pentallian felt different. Was it the scale of it, the utter largeness of an angry, living sun? The sheer arrogance shown by the humans? Was it the violent and systematic killing of almost everyone on-board? Was it the fact that it had invaded the Doctor himself, and come to roost so close to home?

"You okay?" he asked flatly.

He sat beside her on the sofa with an uneaten quarter of a sandwich in his hand. He looked at her sideways, almost without having to turn his head. Martha had leaned forward a few minutes before to pick up a part of the sandwich from the plate on the coffee table, and had frozen there, with her knuckles against the porcelain.

"Oh," she croaked, shaking off the daze. "Yeah. You?"

"Mm," he grunted, and finally bit into the sandwich. "Is there anything you'd like to talk about?"

He had never asked her this question before.

"No, I'm just tired," she answered, though it wasn't the truth. She had a million questions, but she didn't know where to start.

"You sure?" he asked.

She closed her eyes. There were places she didn't want to go, emotionally, with the Doctor, not with the way things were. Additionally, there were places where her mind just _never_ wanted to go. But she had learned in her travels through life that nothing painful ever just faded away when ignored, so she took a deep breath and spoke.

"What would have happened to me and Riley in that pod, if you hadn't got us back?"

He frowned. "How do you mean?"

"I mean, I know we would have died. But, would the pod have melted away, leaving us to fall into the sun? Or, would the whole thing have been swallowed up, and burned from the outside in?"

"That's pretty morbid, Martha."

"I know," she shrugged. "I'm just trying to understand. I keep picturing..."

"You and Riley would have been, for lack of a better word, _cooked_ first. You would have been dead before the sun touched the pod. Then, as the flames actually licked at the unit's surface, it would have taken about five seconds for the whole thing to become ash - the pod, and you and Riley."

She thought about this. As horrible as it all sounded, it helped somehow, to know.

"Then, what would you have done?" She wasn't sure she wanted the answer.

"I probably would have _cooked_ as well, in a manner of speaking," he told her, now taking a bite of his sandwich at last. "There would have been no-one to blast me with cold. All the other crew members were busy doing other things."

This had been the most disturbing image of all - the Doctor in the ice chamber, screaming in pain from the blast. He had had to keep his eyes shut, had had to cling to her, desperate, confessing in the lowest moment that he was _so scared_. She felt the real pressure of being his permanent companion, and realised there was no turning back now.

"Doctor, when you were in that chamber, you were trying to tell me something," she said. Like fingers itching to pick at a scab, her mind could not stop reliving those moments.

"Yeah," he said, staring at the floor.

"I interrupted you. I'm sorry I did that. You were saying something about when you're about to die, and I wouldn't let you finish because I couldn't bear the thought of..." she stopped short.

"It's okay, it doesn't matter now."

"Now, come on, Doctor," she coaxed. "You made me say my piece. Say yours."

He sighed. "It's no big deal, Martha. I was just going to tell you that there's this thing that happens when I'm about to die. Moments before death, my body transforms itself. I regenerate. I can cheat death, live on a little while longer." He took a big bite of sandwich and chewed heartily, blocking up any further commentary.

Her jaw dropped. "_How_ exactly is that _no big deal_?"

"Well, sorry, it's no big deal to me," he said through a barrier of ham and Swiss. "It's happened nine times already. It's a fact of who I am, a fact of being a Time Lord. I just wanted you to be aware of it, so if I died and came back as a new man, you wouldn't try to murder me because you didn't understand who I was."

"A new man?" she asked, her voice rising.

"Yeah. I change. My body, my personality - everything except my memories. And some core beliefs."

"And this has happened before?"

"Yes. Nine times. You are currently sitting beside my tenth body."

"What? And you always look different?"

"Yep. Vastly different looks, vastly different voice."

"Oh my God! I had no idea!"

"Course not. How could you?"

"And your memories remain, so you'd still know me?"

"Yep. I've regenerated most times right in front of my friends and companions, and for me, it's a blip. I close my eyes, and open them, and the same people are still there and I can usually pick up where I left off. But for them, it's much more traumatic. There's a new bloke to get used to."

"Is that why you told Richard Lazarus you'd had experience with that type of transformation?

"Yep. His cells regenerated almost in the same way mine do," he said. "Just took a big milkshake maker to do it. A lot more firepower to do a lot less. A _lot_ more."

"So when we were in Lazarus' chamber and it was trying to shake us to death, did you feel anything? Anything familiar?"

"Not really," he said. "But I was busy trying to find a way out of there. Any changes would have been subtle, and I didn't have time for subtle."

She contemplated again. "A completely new guy?"

"Yes, Martha," he said with a smile. Her incredulity was making him laugh, and also feel she was being a bit obtuse, all at the same time.

"So, how long have you been... ten?"

"I don't know - I've lost perspective. The TARDIS would know. A few years, maybe. I changed while Rose was with me. When I met her, I was a bit taller, a bit broader, and rougher. And I was only in that body for a short time. Before that, I was rather non-descript, and it suited me fine, but that body died in the Time War. I have no say in who or what I am the next time round, it's just a spontaneous shifting of cells, like a localised evolution in the space of thirty seconds."

Oddly, these heavy revelations about the nature of the Doctor's existence had lightened the mood. Martha no longer felt the weight of the Pentallian, she felt a storm of curiosity about the Doctor's previous bodies, voices and personalities.

"Blimey! Do you have photos or anything of your previous selves?"

"The Time Lords were not long in remembrances, at least not of that sort. And I don't exactly live the sort of life that allows me to stop and pose for a photo op."

"Maybe we ought to start!"

"What, like, _hey, there's the Raining Starfire of Floccomatar, and it's about to destroy the planet, but before we help, let's say cheese!_"

"Well, if you're going to be all reasonable and use real-life examples... blimey, what a buzzkill you are."


	2. Chapter 2

**Wow! What a response! Once again, I feel nervous and daunted, hoping I don't let you down! Thank you for the kind words and enthusiasm. You are what drives me - honestly. :-)**

* * *

2

The Doctor decided to take a break after the Pentallian. He planned on just a few days of rest and relaxation before heading off on the next adventure, to give them both time to decompress. But though he recognised Martha's need to work through the issues raised on the Pentallian, he seemed to want to speak to her about it (or anything else) as little as possible.

Because, the fact was, his mood had turned on a dime, no warning at all. And it made the next few days rather difficult to bear. She was used to being cast off from time to time by the Doctor, but his curtness over that period was something wholly new. She had asked if he could answer a few more questions about what had happened, especially the laws governing fuel-gathering. He had told her that she should know by now that the past is the past, and she needed to get _past_ it. In response, she had asked if he was feeling all right, and he had answered, "Yes, I'm fine, and I'm very busy." Later, she had asked what he wanted to do about dinner, and he had told her to just pick something, because not everything in their lives had to be a decision made by a committee.

And so, in the days following their near-miss with the living sun, they spoke little. Martha felt alone and confused as she sometimes did, but she was also feeling some genuine indignation. Why would he take her on as a permanent fixture in the TARDIS if he was just going to treat her like a stowaway? And why the hell he would he reel her in talking rather openly about regeneration, only to push her away again? She didn't know whether he was dealing with a kind of post-traumatic stress from the Pentallian, if something about _her_ was bothering him, or if it was something else entirely. But she didn't reckon he'd be too keen if she asked him outright, and obviously, she didn't enjoy being treated like a tedious child, so she kept her distance.

Really, it was more in her nature to confront, to demand an explanation, to make her indignation known. But it was in the nature of her relationship _with him_ that she shrunk from that sort of head-on dealing, no matter how much she practised in front of the mirror, or how _right _she felt she was.

So, reluctantly, she acceded to the fact that he would eventually snap out of it, and probably apologise, and they would move on. It was the best she could hope for from him, she knew. She also knew that she couldn't force him.

* * *

And after five icy days, "taking a break" from the Pentallian's imprint, something changed. Though whether it was for the better, Martha did not know, not until later.

She was sitting in the media room catching up on the race for Prime Minister, and the Doctor appeared.

"Hi," he said rather softly. He was standing in the doorway in a brown suit and trainers as per usual, but he was unusually well-coiffed and the soft, enticing scent of an impeccably-chosen cologne wafted about her nostrils. She had a mental catalogue of nuances of the Doctor's person, but she had never before really noticed how he smelled. She inwardly sighed at this new morsel of torture.

She stood up. "Going somewhere?" she asked, referring to the fact that he was wearing his coat.

"Er, yeah," he told her. "I've been feeling restless. I'm... I'm sorry if I've been short with you. I guess I'm just... I don't know what. I guess restless is a good word. But I shouldn't have taken it out on you."

"It's okay. I can't stay mad at you anyway," she conceded sheepishly.

"You are not the target for me to work out my angst. That's not what you're here for." He said this with remarkable earnestness, as though he were trying it on as a mantra, to convince himself.

She resisted the urge to ask what she _was _there for, and instead suggested "Well, then, let's get back on the road if standing still isn't suiting you!"

"No, it's not a new adventure I need," he tried to explain. "Not that I don't like this thing we do, I've just been feeling like I need something else. Not something _more_, just something different."

"Something specific?"

"I'll know it if I see it."

"Okay," she said, knowing where this was going. "So you're going out?"

"Yeah, I'm just going to go out and clear my head for a bit."

"Are you sure you don't want any company?"

"I'm sure."

"You know, I _am _sort of here for working out angst. Friends always listen, right?"

"I need to work out what I want, what I need... or..." he sighed. "Just need to be alone. It's nothing personal, Martha."

"Okay," she croaked. She wanted to give him his space, and the way he was acting, it didn't seem like he knew anything anyhow. But she had to mightily suppress the desire to fire questions at him, make suggestions, have him debunk her insecurities and reassure her.

She choked back any emotion, and tried, "So, where are you going to go? Aren't we parked in deep space?"

"I thought Amsterdam might be nice. Lots of waterfront walks for a guy who needs to think," he shrugged. "What do you say? There's plenty for you to do, as well."

"Sure. Which, erm... _era_ are we going to?"

"Your choice."

"Let's just stick with early twenty-first century," she sighed. "If I'm going to be on my own, I at least want the familiarity of running water and internet."

"Right then," he said. "Amsterdam, 2007 it is. I'll park in Leidseplein, sound good?"

"Whatever you like."

But before he turned to go, he seemed to look her up and down. Then he made brief eye-contact, and looked her over once more, his eyes drooping as if in a reverie. He said nothing else, and proceeded then to move the TARDIS, and disappear through the front doors without saying goodbye.


	3. Chapter 3

Martha started out by drowning her rejection in some hot chocolate, while eating a crêpe disguised as a small pizza and trying to concentrate on a novel she'd found on the floor of one of the storage rooms. When her mind wandered to dark places, she tried to tell herself that she hadn't been rejected, because she hadn't actually put herself out there - she had merely offered a lonely guy some company. She had offered to be there for a friend, that's all, and he was well within his rights to decline. If he needed to clear his head, as he said, then it stood to reason that he'd want to spend the evening alone, walking along the waterways and reflecting.

But no matter how hard she tried not to make the Doctor's angst _about her, _ she just kept coming back to the general atmosphere of the TARDIS over the past five days, and the all-too-familiar sensation of never getting what she wanted, of something missing from her life, in spite of having a very full life.

Next, she saw a film at an art house theatre, about a woman and her six children, and how they escaped the Rwandan genocide. Depressing as it was, it took her mind off the Doctor for a bit.

But as soon as the carnage finished on the screen, the mental carnage came back. Was he having second thoughts about taking her on full-time? If so, should she just bow out gracefully and get on with her life? Was he tormented and/or traumatised by having been possessed by a sun? If so, could she be of any help?

Why wouldn't he talk to her about it, whatever it was? Why wouldn't he give her a chance to help him?

And _what_ in God's name was with the big twice-over he'd given her, just before leaving the media room? If she didn't know better, and if she had seen that look on the face of any other man, she'd say it was something like _interest_. Interest in her, and the fact that she was young, eager, athletic and standing there waiting for something to happen. He _had_ looked her over, hadn't he?

Well, had he? She supposed that he had done similar things before when sizing her up for a particular scenario (including when they had first met), and she rarely ever thought much of it. What made this incident different? She couldn't say for sure. It had been over almost before it had begun, and it had made her go pink all over, and she couldn't be certain that she hadn't blushed and looked away. So it may very well have been no different than all those other times...

"Ugh, snap out of it, Martha," she scolded herself as she opened the TARDIS door with the key he had given her just after the Pentallian. She shed her coat and hung it by the door, and called out to see if the Doctor had returned yet. Either he was being incredibly impolite by not answering, or he hadn't returned from his head-clearing excursion just yet.

That was just as well. She went to bed alone, as usual, but completely alone in the TARDIS.

* * *

The Dutch morning came as mornings sometimes do: with a blare from an alarm clock, and a maddeningly chipper sun outside. Martha performed her morning ablutions and changed into some "street" clothes, then went to the console room. To her surprise, it was devoid of any Time Lord presence. Normally whenever she woke, even in the days before their permanent arrangement, she could count on him being there, waiting to fly them to their next destination, but not today.

"Doctor?" she called out, thinking perhaps he was behind a ceiling panel or under the floor. When there was no answer, she went to the archway leading to the TARDIS' corridors. "Doctor!"

Her voice echoed amongst the walls and rooms and memories, but the Doctor did not answer.

She looked at her watch. It was eight in the morning, local time. She had known it was approaching _late_, but she wanted to be sure.

Next she went to the door and peeked out side. Leidseplein Square with the Marriott Hotel in the distance. The TARDIS was still parked in the same spot.

If he was indeed not here, the Doctor had been out all night. He had been "clearing his head" for twelve hours, all night through, and into the next day.

She stood at the top of the ramp with her hands on her hips and a frown on her face.

* * *

As the TARDIS door creaked open, Martha, sitting on the navigator's seat with her book, glanced at her watch for the eight hundredth time in the past forty minutes. It was eight-forty-two, and the Doctor was finally stumbling in.

"You all right?" she asked. She was trying to play it cool, not immediately bombarding him with questions about his whereabouts like an overly concerned mother, and also not showing any keenness or more-than-casual concern.

"Yeah, fine," he told her, rather surprised to see her sitting there. The front of his suit was disheveled, and his hair had gone a bit flat.

"Did you get any sleep?" she decided to ask, shoving a playing card into her book to save the place.

He smiled wearily. "Don't worry about me, Martha."

"Okay," she shrugged, moving to open her book again. "But maybe next time you're going to be out all night, you could call?"

"Don't tell me," he snapped. "You were afraid I was lying in a ditch."

"Or floating in a canal," she added. "Or kidnapped and being dissected by government officials. Or building a weather balloon on another planet. With you, it's hard to tell."

"I promise, if I get kidnapped or killed, I'll be sure to get on the horn and give you a ring, all right?

"Oi," she said, finally showing some concern. She sat up straight in the chair and leaned forward. "Don't get cute with me. You and I, we may not be the closest of friends lately, but we do live here together, we share a life, in a manner of speaking. Do not get surly about me being concerned for your well-being when you stay out all night. You've never done that before, I was worried!"

"Martha, I'm alive, as you can see. I am an adult, I can handle myself."

He was being cagey. "Doctor were you doing something that's going to get you killed?"

"No," he sighed. "I wasn't."

"Something that's going to get you thrown in prison? On this planet or any other?"

"No, not that either."

"Okay, you don't have to tell me where you were, but let's just agree..."

"You're right, I don't have to tell you anything. I don't owe you any explanation. Just drop it."

She clammed up, hurt, and sat back. She crossed her arms over her chest and looked away from him. "Fine. Let's just get the hell out of here."

"Actually, we need to stay in Amsterdam a bit longer," he told her, shedding his coat, and heading for the hallway. "Something's come up."

"I don't suppose you'd tell me what."

"I'll handle it. You just concentrate on that book of yours."

"Where are you going?"

"To get a glass of water. Would you like me to phone you when I get to the kitchen?" he called from down the hall.

* * *

That night, he brushed past her bedroom door and said, "Going out again. Don't wait up."

"Wha-" she began. But he was already out of earshot, and in the next ten seconds she heard the TARDIS' front door slam.


	4. Chapter 4

**4**

She was not surprised when she arose at half-past seven, the second morning in Amsterdam, showered, brushed, changed, and found no Doctor in the console room or anywhere else. She had had the audacity, the morning before, to hope that his behaviour had been an anomaly, but his brusque departure last night had dashed that particular notion. She had fully expected not to see him until well past eight the following morning.

When he did finally show himself back inside the TARDIS, it was, as expected, nearly nine-o'clock. But Martha was not sitting by the door with her foot metaphorically tapping. She shut herself up in her room and set about organising her closet for a quick getaway. With the behaviour, coupled with his apparent hostility toward her, she felt she might have to get up and leave on short notice sometime soon (and she was determined to have it be _her _decision, if it came down to it), so she wanted to be able to fit everything into her bags efficiently. She actually went as far as to put her shoes into a valise.

"Martha?" she heard him calling from outside her bedroom door.

"Just a moment," she called back. She stood and stalled for a few moments, just to make him wait, then finally crossed the room and opened the door. He looked disheveled, as he had yesterday morning. "Well, Doctor. Fancy seeing you here."

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"I'm fine," she answered, genuinely surprised by the question. "Why?"

"Well, you're all holed up in your room," he told her. "You're usually up and about and rarin' to go by this time of day."

She opened her mouth to answer, but she had absolutely no idea how to respond to this. He was acting as though _she _was the one exhibiting antisocial behaviour. All she could think to ask was, "Really, Doctor?" She looked at him with desperate inquiry on her face, and her hands on her hips.

"What do you mean _really_, _Doctor_? I'm just concerned about you."

She stood staring for a bit longer, and then let out a puff of exasperated air.

"Do you remember the conversation we had yesterday morning?"

"Yeah, I do. Sorry I'm unpleasant sometimes," he said, ploughing through the issue. "But what about _you_?"

She dodged, reckoning she'd wait to see what happened over the next few days and weeks.

"Let's just... what's next? Onward and upward, or more fun with the Dutch?"

"I'm ready to move on," he said, turning and striding down the hall, assuming she'd follow. And she did. "I thought we could visit the Sideways Gardens of Açquieu."

"Sideways gardens?"

"Yeah," he said, quickening his pace toward the console room. "Never seen it before - only read about it. The vegetation on the planet Arrennappe doesn't grow toward the suns. It thrives on water at first, and then gravity, after reaching a certain level of maturity. So everything that comes up out of the ground eventually grows sideways. The healthiest plants grow out of cliff-faces and cracks in rocks. They have a leg-up because they're already horizontal and don't have to bend at the base."

"Hm," she shrugged. "Sounds interesting."

"Mm, though the planet is surprisingly barren because of some other quirks, so the sideways gardens are an anomaly. It's only this one little corner of the world that has anything of note growing at all. So it's a big deal."

* * *

Cautiously, Martha joined the Doctor on a jaunt to the Sideways Gardens of Açquieu. The place was put together as a tourist attraction, so there were thousands of varieties of multi-coloured flowers and shrubs, and easy, mud-free paths to walk upon. Little plaques on the ground had information about each species, and the Doctor stopped to read each and every one. He lectured, he skipped, he smiled giddily, he ate some kind of ice treat that was orange in colour but tasted like black liquorice. He acted like a very tall child, even held her hand on a few occasions. All in all, to her, it felt like she had her normal, weird old Doctor back, only with perhaps a slightly drunken twist.

Though, conspicuously, there was no mention of Amsterdam, of two nights spent away from the TARDIS, two tense mornings upon which he returned and offered no explanation. There was no apology for brushing her aside and treating her like a meddling aunt and certainly no hint of what he had accomplished in all of this madness.

But because they didn't have any pressing plans, they left the TARDIS parked behind the employee's entrance to the gardens, had dinner in a nearby village, then retired to their rooms for the night. Martha parted ways with the Doctor with a relatively good feeling, considering how she'd felt that morning. Perhaps his all-night adventures _had_ been a fluke, and from now on things would seem normal. So what if he never talked about Amsterdam or what he had been up to? Sometimes, one just has to let the little things go.

* * *

And so, she _was_ surprised the following morning when, for the third time in a row, she woke and readied herself, went to the console room to find no Doctor in sight. She sighed. "Now what?" she asked aloud. She glanced at her watch. It was just after eight. She went back to her room to wait. Again, she didn't want to seem too keen...

Nine o'clock rolled around, and she checked again. No Doctor. The same at ten, then eleven.

Her anger eventually faded, and some real worry set in.

She stood at the controls and stared at them as if these instruments upon which the Doctor placed his hands every day, and had done every day for almost a millennium, would tell her where he had gone and why. She checked outside to see if they were still, indeed, parked by the gardens, and they were. She stepped outside for a moment and moved around the blue box, looking in all directions, to see if she could spot a tall Time Lord in a suit, perhaps in the distance.

No such luck.

But when she came back into the console room, a sound reached her ears. A thud, and then a groan.

"Hello?" she said.

Thud, then groan.

She walked up the ramp, and found the Doctor on the other side of the console, on his hands and knees. He was still in his pyjamas, and they were sticking to him like shrink-wrap. His hair was matted down and wet, and his face had gone ghastly pale. He looked up at her with a slack jaw and attempted to speak, but nothing coherent came out.

"Oh my God, Doctor!" she cried. She knelt and tried to hoist him by the underarm. "Did you crawl out here?"

He nodded. He held onto the navigator's seat and allowed her help him stand up, and then he threw himself upon the chair.

"Thanks," he heaved.

"Now what the hell is the matter?" she asked, pressing her hand to his forehead. "You're burning up!"

"Well, near as I can tell, I'm dying."

"What?"

"Maybe not literally, but it sure feels that way." It seemed to Martha that he was struggling to hold his head up. "I have fever, nausea, headache, congestion, various... emissions. And I ache literally _everywhere_."

"How long has this been going on?"

"I woke up in the middle of the night and didn't feel well," he said. "Thought it was the food. I've never had fish on this planet before. Hoped I could sleep it off, but..."

"Okay, let's get you back to bed, Doctor," she said. "Up you come."

Again, he allowed her to help him stand up, and she supported him as best she could as they trudged back down the hall toward his bedroom. As they went, he coughed hard a few times, and he commented on how a bloody cough was the last bloody thing he needed.

She had him sit on the bed, and tell her where his pyjamas and sheets were stored. She found them easily and handed him a fresh set of sleepwear. While he clumsily climbed out of one set of pyjamas and into a clean one, she busied herself changing the sheets. Then she told him to crawl into bed, and she covered him over.

"Does the TARDIS have a blood lab?" she asked.

"Of course," he groaned, trying to get comfortable.

"Do you have equipment to take cultures? Or do Time Lords do that?"

"Yep," he said. "But I don't know..."

"What?"

"I don't know if you'll find anything." He hoisted himself onto one elbow, looked at her and blinked with lucidity.

"Well, that's why we take cultures, to find out if we'll find anything."

"No, I mean... I don't know how I could have picked up this virus."

"Well, you said yourself, you've never had the fish on this planet before..."

"This isn't simple food poisoning. It's not organic oils reacting with my stomach enzymes, Martha. This is a whole different kettle of..." he trailed off.

"I can see that it's not food poisoning," she protested. "I'm just saying, it's a foreign planet. Viruses come from..."

"This shouldn't be happening!"

She took a deep breath and reminded herself that he was ill, maybe a bit scared, possibly on his way to delirium. "Well, just let me do some cultures, and we'll see, okay?"

Any impetus he'd had disappeared with that, and he flopped back onto his pillow. "Okay."

"Where's the lab?"

"Two doors down from the furniture storage unit."

"Where is that?"

"Across the hall from the costume room."

She rolled her eyes. "You know what? I'll find it. Just get some rest. I'll be back with a big needle in about an hour."

* * *

Two full days passed, in which Martha cared for him as though he were a typical human patient (which was all she was trained to do) and he did not protest. He slept a lot, and seemed to improve rather quickly.

On the third day, he was sitting up in bed reading, rather than lying down moaning. His cough was settling into his chest and loosening the buildup in his lungs.

Martha came in with a half sandwich and some orange slices, and set them down on the night table.

"You're looking better," she chirped. She took a thermometer from her pocket and stuck it in his mouth. "It's been forty-eight hours, and the blood cultures are finished. You seem to have rhinovirus."

The thermometer dropped out of his mouth. "What?"

"Rhinovirus," she repeated.

"Did you double-check?"

"Actually, I did," she answered.

"Check again!"

"Doctor, I know how to analyze a blood culture!"

"Ugh," he groaned, once again leaning back into his pillow. "This is so not good."


	5. Chapter 5

**5**

"Well, I'll tell you one thing," she said. "This is one of the worst cases of rhinovirus I've ever seen. It quite literally brought you to your knees."

"That's because I've never had it before. Not used to it. No, no, this is not good at all!"

Martha chuckled. "Doctor, rhinovirus is the common cold."

"I know what it is, Martha," he snapped.

"Then, what are you worried about? People get this all the time..."

"Exactly. People! I'm not people."

"You mean, you're not human?" she asked.

"Right. And I don't get human diseases!"

"Well, there's a first time for everything," she commented.

"Did you notice any mutation?" he asked.

"In the viral cells? No, they looked pretty standard to me."

"Are you sure?"

She sighed. "Yes, for heaven's sake. I've tested dozens of samples in this way; people come to the ED panicked because their child is sick with what they're sure is a recurrence of the Black Plague, so we take cultures. It's the perfect thing for a medical student or an intern to do because there's an identification to be made, there's room for discussion and error and it's not life-death. I tell you, the NHS spend a bunch of money to find out that all people have to do is give the kid vitamin C and some chicken soup."

He frowned.

"What's the matter?" she asked. "Are you afraid you're turning human?"

"No, but it's not right, Martha. I'm not supposed to get human diseases!"

"What do you mean _not supposed to_?"

"I mean, there are certain diseases I can get, and have," he said. "But most of them are unique to Time Lords, and they're particularly nasty because they can overcome..."

"...oh, the regenerative properties in your DNA," she finished. "I see."

"Right. And those regenerative properties are strong enough to fight off almost anything that can put me at death's door... gunshot wounds, radiation, and the deadliest of poisons. Even a nasty fall. Certainly, any common virus that humans can catch."

She tried not to feel insulted. "Is that because we're so primitive compared to you?" She crossed her arms over her chest and smirked a bit.

"Sorry, but in a word, yes. You have four proteins in your DNA - I have nineteen. You have twenty-six chromosomes - I have a hundred and two. It doesn't make me _better_, it just makes me..."

"More complicated."

"Exactly. Time Lord DNA has to recombine to account for everything I know and am, and everything I will be! Which is saying something! Regenerative properties are part of the DNA, and have to be able to fix anything that happens to me. Time and space is almost literally in my guts, Martha. I know and feel and intuit differently than you do, and different _stuff_ than you do, on a different level. I'm... almost a creature of the abstract if you really want to get down to it."

She took up the smirk again. "And again, never pompous at all."

"You have affective needs as a human being. You have to eat and drink to stay alive. Psychological health - things moving coherently in your life, all being right and logical with the world - it's secondary, yeah?"

"Yeah."

"My affective needs are tied more to the fabric of reality and how it flows from one moment to the next than to any food or drink. I do need to eat, but my psychological health is on a universal scale and it's not secondary, Martha. I'd call that fairly abstract. It's how we evolved."

She shrugged. "Okay, fair enough. So, if you had to guess, what would you say is happening? How did you catch a cold?"

"I don't know, but it's not the only thing I've..." he stopped short. This time, it wasn't a pensive trail-off, it was a deliberate cutting-off of a thought. He looked at her guiltily.

"It's not the only thing you've what, Doctor?"

"Never mind. Obviously, something is happening at the molecular level. And no, I'm not turning human, but..." he sighed again. "What _am _I turning into?"

* * *

He spent another day in bed, just to be safe, even though he felt basically fine. Martha warned him that after a cold, the biggest mistake people make is thinking they can get up and do things as usual because they feel better. More often than not, they overdo it, and put themselves right back into the sick bay.

So two days after the epic rhinovirus discovery, the Doctor finally crawled out of bed with a clear head and nostrils, and a slightly blocked lung (though the cough was working on that at intervals).

He found Martha in her room pulling on a clean, white lab coat. Her hair was up, and the surgical gloves were already on.

"Blimey, should I be nervous?"

"What?"

"Lab coat, serious look on your face. Those _really _charming snappy gloves."

"I was going to go back into the lab. I thought we could try and work out together what's going on with you, why you're suddenly getting lowly colds, when you should be catching lofty Time Lord diseases."

He squinted, smiling awkwardly. "I've been couped-up for days, Martha. I'm kind of in the mood to get out of here. I've moved us back to Earth - we're in Prague, still in 2007."

"Oh, okay," she said, taking off her lab coat.

"But, there's no reason why _you_ shouldn't investigate the blood, if you want."

She raised her eyebrows and blinked. "Oh."

"But you should really get out, too," he suggested. "You've been couped-up in here with me. Go catch a film or something."

"Sure, whatever," she sighed, tossing the lab coat aside. "Sounds like great fun."

"What? What's that all about?" he wanted to know, pointing at her attitude.

She put one hand on her hip, and rested her weight on one leg. "I don't want to _catch a film_."

"Then go back to the lab. What's the big deal?"

"Doctor, you know I can't investigate your blood at the molecular level, or whatever, without you. I have no idea how to map or interpret Time Lord DNA."

"Well, I'll help you when I get back."

"Which will be when?" she asked, even though she knew the answer. From this point on, the conversation went decidedly south.

He crossed his arms and became suddenly defensive. "Why does it matter?"

"It's not the point," she told him, feeling the rejection rising again. "I signed on to travel with you, to help you, to be at your right hand, not to sit in a dark room and wait while you... do whatever it is you do when you're out all bloody night."

"Well, at what point when you _signed on_ did we agree that I wasn't allowed to have a life of my own? Or that I have to tell you everything?"

Blood began to boil beneath every inch of her skin. She clenched her fists and took a deep breath. Her exhale formed a sarcastic smile across her face, and she said, "You know what? You're absolutely right. We never did say that. We didn't agree that you couldn't have secrets, or that you have to tell me _anything_ let alone _everything_. We didn't officially agree that you ever even have to look at me, speak to me or refrain from throwing marbles at me!"

"Oh give me a break," he spat, turning to leave.

"You know what? When you get back, Doctor, you can take me home!" she called after him. "I'll just get the hell out of your life."

"Fine, whatever," he muttered, disappearing down the hall. She heard the front door slam, and didn't see him again until nine o'clock the following morning, when he rolled in, looking wrinkled from head to toe.

* * *

Martha was as angry at herself as she was at the Doctor. She had got her hopes up. Again! When would she learn that hoping never went anywhere where the Doctor was concerned - even if it was simply the hope that he would return to the TARDIS in a reasonable amount of time?

So, she had spent part of the morning packing her things and trying not to cry. She would not resort to that, and she would not resort to screaming into her pillow, throwing things or alcohol. She would deal with this like an adult, and give herself the satisfaction of knowing that if she so chose, in a matter of a few minutes, she could be home, free of all this angst.

She went looking for the Doctor, in spite of an intense desire not to have to see or talk to him. She found him in the library, going through some old books.

"Hi," she said flatly, not bothering to come in.

"Hi," he replied, immersed in searching for a particular volume.

"I'm ready for a lift home."

He stopped short and looked up at her. "Oh, erm... well, we need to stay in Prague one more day."

She sighed. "Again? What's come up this time? Wait, never mind. I don't want to know. Can't you just take me home, and then come right back?"

"It's dodgy, you know that," he said. "I need to come back to the same evening, and I am in no way precise with aiming this machine."

She had heard him claim this before, but it seemed to her that he was precise or imprecise with "aiming this machine" as it suited him.

She let out a puff of air through her teeth. "Okay. Tomorrow then. I'll be in my room. As if you didn't know."

Around seven o'clock that evening, she heard him leave once again.

* * *

She didn't wait for him to return before bringing her belongings to the console room. So, when the disheveled Doctor stumbled in at half-past eight the following morning, he was greeted by two suitcases waiting on the platform beside a red rucksack.


	6. Chapter 6

**Interestingly, a few of you have mentioned that I warned that neither of our heroes are particularly likeable, and a few of you have found stuff not to like in Martha already! Well, for what it's worth, _this _is the point in the story where, if you're going to judge her, I intended for you to start now.**

**And having said that... enjoy!**

* * *

**6**

"Ready to go?" Martha asked, sauntering into the console room and up to the platform.

The Doctor was standing over her packed things, hands in pockets, looking forlorn.

"Martha, please," he said in a low, low voice without making eye-contact. "I don't want you to go."

"Doctor, I spent the last two nights sitting on my bed reading magazines and watching superhero movies. I can do that at home, and I can finish medical school while I do it. And also, I won't have to worry about you or listen to you tell me how insignificant I am. So, given the choice..."

"Martha," he said gently. He approached her slowly and reached out, to see if she would recoil. She didn't. He put his hands on her upper arms. "Martha, I know that I haven't been the most predictable guy lately, and certainly not the nicest."

"Well, that's the understatement of the century!" she cried out, wriggling her arms out of his grasp, but not stepping away. "You've been up and down like a roller coaster! You're a complete arse to me for two straight days, and then you get all giddy again and show me the Sideways Gardens of Whatever-the-Hell, or, apparently, you become contrite. Honestly, your mood swings are causing _me_ to have mood swings! And I _hate _that you have that much, and that _kind _of an effect on me!"

He half-gestured with his hand for her to please stop, and he nodded in recognition of what she was saying. "Listen, listen. As you've probably noticed, I'm going through a bit of a rough patch just now. I'm having some issues that I don't quite know how to suss out yet, so I'm asking for a bit of latitude."

"Latitude."

"I'm sorry - there are just some things that I cannot share with you. But I want you in my life, and I absolutely do not fancy the thought of taking you home."

She swallowed hard. "Doctor, you've really hurt me."

"I know," he sighed, putting his hands down at his sides. "I am sorry, Martha. I'm so sorry."

"I mean, there aren't very many things that would make me think I'd rather be _away _from you than _with _you..."

"I get it - I know how I've been acting. And unfortunately, I can't guarantee that it won't happen again. But as long as I have control over my emotions, I promise, I will be vigilant about _not_ being an arse. And I will never, ever throw marbles at you, no matter how bad things get."

"Are you saying you aren't in control of what you're saying at those times? The times right before you go out for the night?" she wanted to know. Her ears had perked, thinking she had been let in on part of the problem, on something she could use to help him.

"In a manner of speaking, Martha, but please - just let me deal with it on my own for now. If and when I come to a point where I can fill you in, then I will. But again, I'm asking for some leeway, and for your trust."

"Leeway and trust, eh?"

"I might get mean again, but it won't be forever, and it's not about you. Okay?"

"Doctor, why can't you tell me what's going on?"

"I just... can't. Not right now."

"Are you afraid I wouldn't understand? That I would judge you somehow?"

"No," he told her. "That's not why."

She looked at the floor and muttered, "If I were Rose, would you tell me?"

"No, I wouldn't."

She looked up at him, surprised to have received a quick, straight answer. He was looking back at her steadily, with seriousness in his eyes.

She exhaled heavily and shifted her weight to one leg. She crossed her arms defensively. "I don't know, Doctor. I can take only so much."

"Please stay, Martha," he pleaded evenly, taking her hand. "This is not a good time for me to be on my own. If you believe nothing else I say, believe that."

"Okay," she conceded grudgingly. That particular point seemed very likely true. "Doctor, just tell me one thing: when you go out, and stay out all night, are you doing something dangerous? Should I be worried that you'll get blown up or cease to exist or something? I just want to know you're okay."

"I'm safe," he told her. "I swear, I'm not hurting myself."

She smiled reluctantly. "Okay. How long should I plan on putting up with this?"

"I'm so sorry, but I have no idea."

"I won't be able to do it forever."

"I know. If I reach a point where I know how long, I promise I will let you know."

"Do you _really_ still want me around?"

"Yes, I do. More than ever."

"Am I useful to you?"

"Useful? You're my best friend, Martha. I don't think of you as _useful_."

She smiled for real this time, in spite of the myriad of emotions churning inside, and for the first time in an unusually long while, they actually hugged.

_This is not a good time for me to be on my own. If you believe nothing else, believe that._

* * *

What followed was a short but sweet period of business-as-usual. They saved a small planet from a giant laser, helped get agriculture up and running on a planet where the people had just relocated in order to avoid religious oppression, and back on Earth, visited the Pyramids at Giza.

At some point during that period, the Doctor agreed to show Martha how to make Potica, the traditional dessert which he had helped develop in Eastern Europe, rather indirectly. As he was bending to put the roll in the oven, he continued to talk, and in a distracted moment, accidentally touched the side of the oven with the top of his hand. He cursed and threw the pan in, slammed the oven shut, and rushed to the sink. He ran cold water over the burn, and Martha winced looking at the bright red mark stretching over his flesh.

Then, he turned off the water, and gazed at his hand in front of his face for a few moments, turning it back and forth. He squinted at it, as though searching for something. Eventually, he sighed in resignation, and continued to run cold water over it.

"Everything okay?" she asked.

"No," he said. "I mean... as okay as could be expected. Can you get me a bandage, please?"

"Sure," she replied, shuffling down the hall to the infirmary.

Wonder and concern, she felt. The anger over the secretive, two-night jaunts in Amsterdam and Prague was basically forgiven and all but forgotten.

_All but forgotten_, a phrase that still implies a vestige of remembrance. Because as hard as she tried, as much as she loved him, forgave him and wanted to give him the "latitude" he had asked for, a pesky, niggling bit of betrayal still would not leave her be. Especially since he had warned her it would probably happen again.

* * *

She had agreed to give him space. So, after about two and a half weeks, over a period of forty-eight hours, she could feel the Doctor's mood changing, his demeanour growing more intense and his fuse growing shorter. She simply kept her distance. But as she pulled into herself and grew isolated, her feelings grew more concentrated; her worry, her imagination, her determination. She began to wonder if she could _really_ give him the space he needed. Did she really have it in her just to take this periodic injustice without investigating further, without doing something to try and stop it happening?

Could she allow her friend to struggle on his own with something that was clearly quite a large roadblock for him?

She wanted to be strong. She wanted to have the mettle and integrity that this task required. But she began to question what _mettle_ and _integrity_ really would mean in this case. She wondered whether keeping her nose out of the Doctor's problems really _was_ the strong, just thing to do.

And as the Doctor stuck his head into her bedroom one night after a remarkably silent day, and said grumpily, "New York. Any objections?" she found herself unravelling.

And as she watched from the shadows as he left through the front door, looking and smelling amazing, she whispered, "Doctor, please forgive me for this," and followed him onto the streets of the Big Apple.

Clad in a black hooded sweatshirt, jeans, hiking boots and a driving hat, she followed half a block behind him until he took a turn, and entered a bar in midtown Manhattan.


	7. Chapter 7

**So, the reason I said that Martha might be judged in the previous chapter was that she _agreed_ to give the Doctor some space, but rationalized herself out of it, finding her own reasons to follow him anyway.**

**Some of you felt that she should be judged for staying with him after he apologized and tried in vain to explain himself. I agree that before they have their little chat, she probably should have just got the hell out of there, but when a friend tells you he's going through something and just needs your support and understanding, how can anyone say no? Especially when he says that it's really not a good time to be on his own just now. I really don't feel Martha is the sort just to say, "I don't care what you're going through, just get me out of here." She loves him and is naturally a caretaker - of course she wants to stay and help... and investigate.**

**And sure, the Doctor's been kind of an ass, but trust me when I say, he is _genuinely_ going through something big that he _genuinely _feels he can't share with her. ****Of course, this being the world of _Doctor Who_, we know that the problem can't really be solved until Martha gets involved, but the Doctor doesn't know what we know, does he? ;-)**

**Most of you seem to have figured out what's going to happen in that bar in midtown Manhattan, but there might also be some minor surprises here too... hope you enjoy them!**

* * *

**7**

It was a sleepy, chic little bar with haphazardly (but intentionally) painted black walls and Mark Rothko prints hanging about. There were chalkboards on two walls detailing the specialised Martinis they served, all of which were named for modern artists or jazz singers. The music bordered on beatnik, the barstools were dull chrome with black leather seats, and the overhead lighting was, of course, dim, with a purplish tint.

The place wasn't too crowded, as it was a Wednesday night, and it wasn't quite nine o'clock yet. Martha walked with a heavy gait so as not to be recognised, and snuck to the back and chose a booth, hiding behind the brim of her hat.

Not long after she'd settled in, the Doctor was sitting at the bar beside a woman, Martha guessed she was between twenty-five and thirty, with spectacular hair. It was long, with giant, perfect curls, and dyed almost like stripes, in honey and graham cracker tints. When the woman turned her head, Martha could see that the face matched the hair. She was darker-skinned, perhaps Puerto Rican, with perfect, almond-shaped eyes and lips that looked to have been sculpted from clay. She was dressed in jeans that seemed painted on, and a royal purple satin top that tied behind her neck once, and four more times across her otherwise bare back. She was attracting glances and stares from many a man in the room, all of whom Martha suspected had been pining, and/or working up the courage to talk to her. But only the Doctor had had the audacity.

Martha spied him handing some money to the bartender, and over the next few minutes, watched him chat up the honey-and-graham-cracker-haired woman. After a bit, the woman's friend kissed her on the cheek with a knowing smile, and left. The bartender brought the Doctor and his new friend each a drink, though Martha noticed that the Doctor didn't touch his. The woman had a couple of greenish Martinis over the course of the evening, but did not seem to drink excessively. She leaned on the bar with her legs crossed in his direction, her head resting on her hand, fingers laced through her hair - a clear sign of interest. Any touching of the hair is flirtation - Martha knew this from experience. She smiled softly, and looked at him with amazement as she listened to him talk, and threw hear head back gracefully when she laughed.

And as the night progressed, Martha ordered three drinks, one of them alcoholic, two of them not, and received more than a couple of surly stares from the waitress. She tried not to drink any of the gin and tonic she had requested, for fear it would dull her.

Plus, for most of the evening, she was suppressing an acute nausea.

But it wasn't jealousy.

Well, of course it was, but it wasn't _just _jealousy.

It was the overwhelming feeling that there was so much more going on than she could handle. What was there about this scenario, this chatting-up of a beautiful woman, by this ridiculously charming, bold Doctor, that he couldn't share with her? Of course, she knew the _easy _answer to that question. But what sorts of "issues" could he be sorting through _in this way_? Somehow, when the Doctor did mundane things, she felt that it was anything but mundane. He was acting, more or less, like any other good-looking guy with an edge, but _he wasn't _just a good-looking guy with an edge. He was a _Time Lord_. This _had _to be a guise of some sort, the wrapping for some other secret agenda. He had issues he said he didn't know how to work out. How did this woman play into it? Was she a malevolent alien with a shiny, silken candy coating? What if she wasn't? What if she was an innocent bystander who was about to get pushed, pulled or dragged into the Doctor's dark side? He had sworn he wasn't hurting himself, but Martha hadn't thought to ask if he was hurting someone else. She hated herself for thinking it, but she had to consider all possibilities, now that she was in it.

By midnight, the bar was packed, and Martha had been forced to give up her booth. She stood in the corner beside what used to be a phone booth, and just watched. She watched as the Doctor and the woman leaned in closer, ostensibly to hear one another over the growing din. She watched as he reached up with his right hand and gently ran two fingers across her cheek, and she let her hand crawl forward to rest on his thigh. She watched as he used those same two fingers to trace circles up and down the woman's perfect, bronze arm, and as she used her plastic skewer to pop candied cherries into the Doctor's mouth. At last, he leaned forward to tell her, apparently, the most profound of secrets, and when they pulled back from one another, their lips brushed together very lightly. And then, not so lightly. And then, they pressed against each other, open and searching. Martha averted her eyes from the snog, and flagged down her waitress to pay her bill. She felt she had seen enough.

But then, as she was waiting for the waitress to return with her credit card, the Doctor grabbed the woman's hand, and the two of them stood up and headed for the door.

"No bloody way!" Martha said aloud.

Upon reflection, she didn't know _why _she was surprised, but she was. And then pushed through the crowd so as to see which direction they went.

* * *

They turned left as they exited the bar, and Martha followed, once again, half a block behind. In fact, they walked straight past the TARDIS, all unnoticed against a building on 34th Street. They caught a subway to Brooklyn Heights and finally, she tailed them to a Brownstone home. As they entered, to her horror, she saw a soft, orangish light come on in a ground-floor window. She had been hoping they would go at least to the next floor up, so she couldn't spy on them anymore.

She waited a few minutes to see what would happen, and then slowly, hating herself, approached the window and peered inside. She told herself that if anything destructive was going to happen, it would happen in the flat, not in a public bar or on the subway.

And what she saw through the half-tipped venetian blinds surprised her. The Doctor was sitting on the sofa looking through a photo album, occasionally laughing or asking questions, and the woman was just getting settled in beside him, with a glass of white wine for each of them. She pointed out photos, sometimes sheepishly, and he followed what she was saying with avid interest. They laughed, they joked, they made lingering eye-contact, and seemed to be having a wonderful time together.

When they finished the album, the two of them turned and faced each other, leaning on opposite ends of the big, plush sofa. There was no more lip-mashing or gentle caresses - not yet, anyway.

Someone walked past her, and muttered "pervert" under his breath, and it snapped Martha out of her reverie. She stomped one foot on the pavement and swore, and ploughed up the sidewalk in exasperation. She reached the end of the block and crossed the street, and for a few moments, she stood opposite the flat, where the Doctor seemed to be having a lovely evening, a heart-to-hearts with some woman.

Martha tried not to think of her as some _other _woman; technically she had no claim on him, other than a fairly intense friendship. She felt cheated-on, but that wasn't really the case.

And in any case, her feelings were not the point. The mystery of the Doctor's secretive, erratic and downright weird behaviour was the point. She knew she should be worried, not angry nor jealous.

And for the most part, _worry_ was at the forefront of her mind.

* * *

For the next hour, Martha paced back and forth in front of the flat opposite. She sat on the steps for a few minutes, then paced again. She walked to the end of the street and back, and even took an intense stroll around the block - anything to ward off the urge to look into that window again. Twice, she walked back in the direction of the subway station where she had got off, but those little excursions always ended up back here, right where she really shouldn't be. She couldn't tear herself away, and she didn't know why. She was not an obsessive person, she was not the sort who followed people back to their flats and spied on them while on a date. She scolded herself over and over, but then swung back in the direction of wondering if he really was involved in something dire, and needed her help, and was somehow prevented from saying so.

At last, she couldn't take it anymore, and she tore across the street. The blinds still had not been closed all the way, and she could still see them on the sofa. This time they were sitting side-by-side, just holding hands. Their temples were pressed against each other and they were talking intimately - the woman might have even been crying. Still, nothing of what one might expect of two attractive people who met in a bar. The Doctor was still wearing every bit of his usual ensemble, including the shoes, completely laced up, and the woman still had all of her kit intact, including painted-on jeans and knee-high boots.

No, they weren't here for a shag; they were _connecting_, which just made things so much worse.

But if making connections was what the Doctor had been doing when he was out all night, even in Amsterdam and in Prague, then why skip town so soon? Perhaps this woman was the first with whom he'd found a real spark? Perhaps they'd find themselves lingering in New York a bit longer than two nights...

"Oh, God," she groaned, before she could stop herself. She turned and pressed her back against the Brownstone wall, to keep from passing out. _What if he's shopping for a new companion?_


	8. Chapter 8

**So, those of you who believed you knew what would happen, and it didn't... well, hold that thought.**

* * *

Crouching in the shadows in Brooklyn Heights, spying on her friend and a stranger, she realised that she had never asked for her credit card back from the server at the bar. She reckoned it was just as well; she was torturing herself standing there, and even if the guy who had called her a "pervert" had been technically wrong, there was something more than just a little perverse about this whole business.

She boarded the subway back to midtown, charged back into the bar, now a bit crowded, but not like the Soho hotspots. She went directly to the bar, and asked if they had her card. She showed an ID, and the bartender disappeared for a moment, then returned with it in-hand.

He was, she knew, the bartender who had served the Doctor and the mystery woman. She tried to force herself toward the exit, a left turn, two blocks and then back to the TARDIS and into bed to do penance for her temporary insanity tonight. But she couldn't. Hard as she tried, she couldn't just leave it alone.

"Can I ask you a question?" she said to him as he scooped ice into a highball glass.

"Shoot."

"Do you remember seeing a man here tonight, tall, kind of spiky hair, wearing a brown pin-striped suit with a brown and blue tie..."

"Oh, yeah, the guy with the accent. Like yours."

"You remember him, then."

"Yep. He left with someone, kiddo. Sorry. Is he your boyfriend?"

"No, he's not. Just a good friend, and I'm concerned about him. Do you know anything about the girl he left with?"

"Just that she was pretty smokin'. Never seen her before."

Martha nodded. "Okay. Well, did you hear what they talked about? I mean..."

"Listen, sweetie, I really don't feel comfortable talking about that. I mean, it was a private conversation between two people tryin' to hook up, you know what I'm saying? I hear a lot of stuff as a bartender - I can't just go blabbing..."

"Sir, I think my friend is in trouble. He's been behaving erratically, has had the biggest wicked mood swings imaginable. Trust me, it is _not like him _to pick up women in bars. He is not that sort." She knew it sounded like utter rubbish given the smooth display the Doctor had given, but she couldn't very well tell him that the man was an intergalactic trouble-shooter whose life revolved around following chaos everywhere it went, and that he wasn't usually particularly interested in sex, at least not that she had ever seen.

"Really? 'Cause he did just fine from what I could tell. Just fine."

"Yeah, I know. It's hard to explain. Sir, I really need to know. He could be in a lot of trouble. Please."

The bartender, whose name-tag said Louie, sighed heavily. "He was just giving her the lonely-guy bullshit."

"Pardon?"

"Yeah, it was one of the usual song and dances that I hear guys giving girls every night of the year. I hear the _man of action _routine (you know, I love mountain climbing and motocross racing, and when I can, I volunteer with sick kids). I hear the _up and comer _routine (I drive a Beemer and live on Park Avenue and am becoming a partner in some Wall Street firm), and I hear _lonely guy _(I just haven't found the right girl, just want someone to love, been hurt before, yadda yadda) _. _Lonely guy is the most common of the three routines, except your friend did it with an English accent, and that goes a long way. And, I gotta say, accent aside, his set was pretty slick. Better than most."

"Ugh," Martha groaned before she could stop herself. She sank down onto a bar stool and stared at the floor, trying to take it all in. None of what Louie was saying was a particular surprise, though she had been hoping that the Doctor would have more integrity than that, when it came to relationships. The fact that Louie had called the Doctor's lonely-guy monologue his "set" meant that he was likening it to a performance, and that just made her want to scream at the Doctor and ask what the hell he was doing. She _knew _he was capable of wooing a woman with his innate, charming bizarreness without resorting to cheap clichés. His normal _Doctor routine_, which was not bullshit, had worked on her - why was he pretending to be someone else?

"Honey, your friend is no different than any other guy. He just wanted to get some tail, is all. Sorry it's bugging you so much. How about something on the house? I've got a Merlot that'll knock your socks off."

Martha passed on the Merlot, thanked Louie and went back to the TARDIS. She trudged to her room and collapsed into bed, feeling incredibly depressed. Mercifully, sleep took her quickly.

* * *

In the morning, she had never felt so filthy. The clock said it was well past ten in the morning local time, and she was so ashamed of herself, she had no idea what to do next. She was _sure_ the Doctor must have known what she did, so she couldn't go out into the console room, or to the library or kitchen or even the hallway for that matter. So she stayed in her room.

Though, after four hours, she couldn't abide the hunger anymore and finally gave in and went to the kitchen. Much to her surprise, the Doctor was there, repairing the microwave.

"Haven't seen you all day," he commented rather tersely. "Where've you been?"

"Just trying to keep my distance."

"Ah," was all he said.

"So I take it we'll be staying in New York one more night?"

"Yep. Problem with that?"

"Nope. See you tomorrow morning," she said, grabbing a leftover Chinese food container from the fridge and hustling out of the kitchen.

* * *

And when he left again that night, she couldn't help herself. She had to know what was on the agenda for night number two. She wondered if perhaps it would be more of the same, except with a different woman, or if he would see the same spectacular bronzed goddess again.

Still hating herself plenty, dressed again in her black hoodie and driving hat, she watched the Doctor disappear under the famous red awning of Tavern on the Green in Central Park. She no longer wondered whom he was with; one did not come to a restaurant of this calibre in order to meet someone. One came here to woo, to move in for the _coup de grâce_.

For three long hours, she killed time. She did not linger near the entrance; the way she was dressed, she knew the doorman would call the police (and he'd probably be right to do it). She alternated between waiting on a park bench across the path, and circling around the bushes. She watched horse-drawn carriages drop people off at the entrance, and pick them up for a romantic ride through the park. She watched as parties and couples of every ilk climbed into and out of taxis. She even witnessed the public row of a very attractive Latin couple, whom she suspected were probably yelling at each other in Spanish, but the TARDIS' translation circuits were working on her and made it sound like soap opera-style English.

The Doctor and the woman with the honey-graham-cracker hair didn't step out until after eleven o'clock. She was wearing a black velvet strapless dress that was so well-fitted, Martha wondered if she'd had to be sewn into it. The hem nearly touched her ankles in the back, but in the front, it swept up to an "A" point about four inches above her knees.

The two of them were draped all over each other while they waited, as they had come out of the restaurant during a rare, short interval when there were no taxis lingering in the drive. She leaned against him with both arms lazily around his neck, and one leg bent. His arms were around her waist, and no daylight could be seen in-between. They were shameless, until a yellow cab drove up, the Doctor opened the door and ushered her in, then climbed in himself. Once again in the backseat, they resumed their snog, and Martha knew exactly where they would go.

She found the nearest subway station and caught a straight shot to Brooklyn Heights. Somehow, she came round the corner on foot just as the Doctor and his friend were getting out of the cab in front of the Brownstone where they had connected the night before. Traffic out to Brooklyn must have been thick. They climbed the few steps, and the Doctor teased her, pulling her hair aside and nipping at her neck as she fumbled for keys inside her tiny clutch purse. Finally when the door was open, they mashed their lips together again, and stumbled inside.

Once more, Martha found that she couldn't walk away. This time, a different, dimmer light came on after they entered the flat, one from a narrower window to the left of the living room window. She knew without having to pry that it was the bedroom. In between, there was an even narrower window whose glass was matted and opaque. Martha reckoned it was a bathroom.

And she waited, just to see what would happen. For once, she had no desire to actually _see_ what they were doing. She didn't have to look - she already knew. If she looked, she'd never be able to unsee...

After about thirty minutes, the bedroom light went out. Martha gave herself ninety minutes from that point. She reckoned if nothing else happened, she would assume that this was all there was to see, and she would go back to the TARDIS and try to work out what to do next.

But as she sat in the shadows, of course, she had time to think. Martha had been assuming until now that he would be here at the woman's flat until morning, before returning to the TARDIS. But this whole mystery was just bizarre enough, it might be that he'd leave here, and go somewhere else first. It was entirely possible; she still felt as though she didn't have all the pieces of the puzzle. Meeting in a bar, conversing, having a posh dinner and then sex did not add up to some horrible problem that he couldn't handle, and/or turned him into a sniping, nasty maladjust. Unless he was lying to her about the gravity of this particular "rough patch," there _had _to be more to it. But as far as she could tell from experience, it would all more or less resolve itself (if only temporarily) by nine o'clock the next morning. So what would happen next?

So ninety minutes came and went, and she still sat there.

After two hours, she saw the bathroom light come on, and two unclad figures on the other side of the glass, blurrily moving about. The windows fogged up even further with steam, and she reckoned the shower had come on. After another half hour, the living room light came back on, and Martha snuck across the street. She promised herself she'd only peek for a moment. She saw the kitchen beyond the sofa, and the woman dancing about in the Doctor's shirt, pulling stuff out of the fridge, and the Doctor watching amusedly, dressed in a towel from the waist down. They fed each other cubed cheese and strawberries, poured some wine, and then fell into a snog once more, that promised either to drive them back into the bedroom or leave an imprint of the kitchen tile on one of their backs.

That's when she finally left. She could see that the Doctor and his new pal were in this for the long-haul, at least until dawn, and Martha was more confused than ever.


	9. Chapter 9

When she saw him at eight-thirty-eight in the morning, once again with a wrinkled suit and horrible hair, she asked no questions, mentioned nothing of the time nor his attitude. She felt that his _fantastic _mood might make her vomit, in fact, so she simply said hello, and retired to her room (again) until he was ready to go do something constructive.

Indeed, after he had showered, he sought her out for the next adventure. She was still paranoid that he knew she had followed him, and looked for signs in his demeanour that day, but did not detect anything other than an unusually bouncy step in his stride.

Though, she knew she wouldn't be able to keep it secret for long. She was confused and worried, and she was feeling guilty. She knew herself, and she knew she'd be confronting him about his exploits, and also confessing her devious actions. In the back of her mind all day, she was thinking of how to approach it. She couldn't very well act the injured party, she would have to come at it from a position of concern. She would have to share with him her thought process about integrity and what "doing the right thing" really meant to her. She would have to acknowledge that she was weak and short-sighted sometimes. She would have to tread lightly, think it through before she talked to him, because she knew that as soon as he found out she'd been meddling, he'd be furious. And he might have a point.

But she rode out the day, incubating her words and thoughts, terrified she was going to get it wrong. She second-guessed herself hundreds of times - should she say anything or not? Should she now actually begin to do what she had promised, and give him latitude? Accept that he, even if he wasn't sure how, could handle himself, and would let her know if he found that there was any way she could help.

Overnight, she still wasn't sure.

Over the next five days, she still wasn't sure. She watched him out of the corner of her eye when he wasn't paying attention. She blushed when he looked at her, and tried desperately to have normal conversations with him, and relished in moments of pumping adrenaline when the two of them could immerse themselves in something dangerous or enthralling. Then, she didn't have to think about the woman with honey-graham-cracker hair, the flesh-coloured blobs behind the bathroom window, or the fact that it was all symptomatic of something greater, and that she wasn't supposed to know about any of it.

And so, five days later she didn't was still asking herself whether she was trying to _decide _if she should talk to him, or whether she was just too _afraid_ to talk to him.

But a loud clang in the middle of the night made the choice for her.

* * *

"What was that noise?" she asked, cinching her robe round her middle.

The Doctor stood in a smallish room, lit up by fluorescents. He was still in his pyjamas, and he looked at her with squinted eyes, glazed over, though, as if he weren't really seeing her. He stood with a brown bottle in each hand. Martha glanced about, and realised that the room was filled with drugs, labelled by planet of origin.

She took a few steps forward and as she got closer to him, she could _feel _the heat radiating off his body.

"Whoa, you've got fever again!" She touched his arm, and it was clammy. She pressed one hand against his forehead, which confirmed her suspicion: he was burning up. She took the two bottles from him and shoved them into the pocket of her robe. She grabbed onto him and led him out of the room. "Come on, Doctor, we need to get you back to bed or you're going to pass out standing right here."

"I have a streptococcal infection," he rasped at her, his throat in no shape to be speaking. He allowed her to lead him down the hall, back toward his bedroom.

"Sounds like it, yeah, but how do you know?"

"I took a culture yesterday when my throat started to hurt." He coughed hard. Even the whispering was hurting him. "Another stupid disease I'm not supposed to be able to get."

"Well, among other things, you need to quit sleeping around."

"I know."

She realised that she had made a slip and accidentally let him know what she knew. She gritted her teeth and hoped he wouldn't remember what she had said.

She stumbled with him into his dark bedroom and helped him climb into bed, this time, not bothering to change the sheets. She took the bottles from her pocket and examined them. "Both Penicillin and Amoxicillin, Doctor?" she asked. "You took both?"

"Yes," he sighed.

"That's probably not smart, you could make yourself sicker," she scolded. "Why don't you just let _me _administer the medication from now on, okay? You're in no shape to make those decisions."

He nodded, but his eyes were already shut, and he was halfway into a soft snore. She re-set his alarm for _her_ usual wake-up time, and she lay down upon the sofa across the room and fell back asleep. Her last thought was that she needed to give him something in a few hours to reduce the fever, but she couldn't at the moment because had overdosed a tad on the antibiotics. She'd wait until it all had more or less left his system, and then try some plain old paracetamol. Then she could start over, after that, with a reasonable schedule of antibiotics.

* * *

"Martha!"

She sat up with a start at the sound of her name hissed loudly in panic. She looked over at the bed, and found the Doctor curled up, white as a ghost and sweating. A glance at the clock told her she'd been asleep for less than forty-five minutes.

She hopped to her feet and rushed to his side. He was shivering, though still burning from fever, and the sheets were soaked with sweat.

"Oh, my God!" she cried out. "What the hell happened?"

She leaned to her right and turned on the lamp on his night table. It illuminated the room for the first time since she had entered. On the floor, she saw several empty medicine bottles. Antibiotics, fever-reducers, painkillers, anti-nausea medications. She hadn't seen them before because she had helped him into the other side of the bed, and it had been dark.

"Doctor!" she cried out. "What have you done? Have you taken all of these?"

"I don't remember," he told her, his voice grating from the strep throat, and shivering with the rest of him. "I reckon I must have."

"When?"

"I don't remember," he repeated. "What day is it? How long have I been like this?"

"I've only known about it for forty-five minutes, and you seemed fine when I went to bed last night. Were the bottles full?"

"No idea." He close his eyes. "Martha, I feel awful."

"Of course you do," she told him, stroking his head. "You have an infection for a start, and you've overdosed. This could kill you. Or kill a human, at least."

His eyes locked on hers. "I'm not above being human, Martha. I'm not meant to be able to get a cold, or to have a burn scar on my hand or have a streptococcal infection, but I've had them all. There's no reason to think that I'm not going to die of an overdose, just because I'm not meant to."

"Right," she said. "Wait here. Don't go back to sleep, whatever you do! Promise?"

"I promise," he whispered. "Hurry."

She ran down the hall and threw the lights on in the room where they had been before, with shelves full of medicines. Through a veil of tears that she didn't even realise had been brewing, she searched for a small bottle, and finally located it: Ipecac syrup.

She rushed back to the Doctor, this time fully aware that she was sobbing.

"Can you swallow?" she asked.

He tried, and his eyes watered from the pain. He shook his head.

She ran back down the hall and returned with a funnel attached to a throat tube.

"I'm sorry," she told him. "This is the only alternative."

She held his head in place and put the tube down his throat. He gagged hard, and his eyes watered again, but he tried not to fight her. She then poured half the bottle of Ipecac into the funnel, then pulled the tube out. He rolled over to the side of the bed, again, gagging hard and hacking on the scraping pain, grasping his throat with his hands.

"I'm sorry," she repeated.

"'Sokay," he said.

"Shall we get you to the toilet?" she asked him.

He nodded, and she helped him stand up. He indicated a door to their right with his chin, and she led him that way. She threw open the door, and turned on the light, and the Doctor collapsed on the floor. He lay with his cheek pressed to the cold tile, his skin rapidly greying, his lips turning blue.

Tears rolled down her face, and she bit her lip to keep from making sobbing sounds. She wanted to be strong. She was going to be a doctor, for God's sake - she needed to find her mettle _now_. But to see a man usually so vital, and usually immune to stuff like this, a man she loved, so close, possibly, to death... to see him lose his colouring, his strength, knowing that he'd lost his faculties long enough to have done this to himself...

"Doctor, don't go to sleep!" she demanded.

He lifted his head slightly with a start. "I'm not, I'm not." he said, though his eyes did not open.

She turned on the sink and filled her hands with cold water and threw it on him.

He lifted his head further and shook off the shock, this time opening his eyes and looking at her. "What was that?"

"Water!" she told him. "If you go to sleep you might not wake up! Your skin is grey and your lips are blue. I can't take any chances with you, Doctor, and this Ipecac thing might be only step one, depending on whether all that rubbish has had time to get into your bloodstream. Pray that it hasn't."

He put his head back onto the tile, and kept his eyes open. She paced over him for a few minutes, until he moaned, "Martha, I'm going to vomit."

"Good!" she exclaimed. She got down on the floor and lifted him by one arm, pushing him toward the basin. He tried to help, but his body was busy rejecting what was in it.

She heaved with everything she had, and barely made it. Martha flushed the toilet, the Doctor groaned and lay back down on the floor.

"Martha," he whispered as she turned him on his side.

"Yes, love," she said.

"I think I'm dying."

She sniffed, trying to hold the tears back so she could do her job. "I'm really terrified that you're right."


	10. Chapter 10

**So, there have been a lot of cries of "What the hell is going on!?" Well, sorry, this chapter won't tell you everything. Though, there are a few small revelations, and oddly, Martha finds a kind of peace, in spite of herself.**

* * *

**10**

The Doctor did not die.

"But you came damn close," she told him. "Too close for comfort."

"I remember almost nothing," he told her, sitting up in bed trying the soup she had made. "Now what happened again? I emptied bottles of what?"

She sat down on the edge of the bed. "Antibiotics, painkillers, fever reducers and anti-nausea."

"What was my fever?"

"I don't know, I never took your temperature. I was too busy trying to work out how I was going to pump your stomach if the Ipecac didn't work. It must have been sky-high, though. I could feel it coming off you."

"The heat?"

"Yes."

He took a few slurps of soup and thought about things. "I must have ingested it all in a fairly short time, otherwise..."

"...otherwise, old-fashioned vomiting wouldn't have worked! Yeah, I know! Welcome to my overnight prayers, Doctor."

"Ugh, I'm sorry," he groaned. "Thank you, Martha. Seriously. Really, truly. You saved my life."

"You're welcome," she said, staring down at her hands in her lap. "I wish..."

"What?"

"I wish that you hadn't..." she trailed off again.

"What?"

"I wish that the situation hadn't arisen at all, Doctor," she said quietly. "But I'm glad I could be here for you when it did."

He nodded uncomfortably, and continued eating his soup.

"Martha, let me ask you something," he said after a few moments. "Last night, I've swallowed a hundred pills, I'm lying half-conscious on the bathroom floor, grey skin, blue lips, probably wondering if death might be preferable..."

When he didn't continue, Martha pointed out, "I know you have some unusual vulnerabilities these days, Doctor, but a human being would have died. You must have something going for you still."

"Luck, perhaps. Perhaps it's you. But what I want to know is, that close to death... did you happen to see any unusual light? Any gold dust around me?"

"Gold dust? No."

"Are you sure? Nothing shimmery swirling around my person, especially my neck and torso?"

"I'm sure I would have remembered. Why?"

"Mm, I'm sure you would have remembered, too."

* * *

When the metaphorical dust settled once more, and the Doctor was on his feet but still recuperating, Martha went back to her old ways of stewing over the Doctor's behaviour. Added to it was now this business of him suddenly getting sick with human diseases and being nearly struck down by a delirious fever.

It didn't take a genius to realise that something had gone wrong with the Doctor's regenerative properties. He had explained that this quirk of his DNA made it possible for him to flout human disease, but suddenly, perhaps not coincidentally, he was sleeping around a lot and catching common human ailments from common human women. And she knew that his enigmatic question about the gold dust must have been related to what usually happens when he's about to die. Whatever is inside him that makes his cells transform and live on was no longer working properly, if at all.

What was the connection? Martha wondered if his Time Lord DNA had evolved to "punish" him for behaving lustily. Were his defences coming down now because his libido had gone up? Was a nasty cold, a burned hand and strep throat (with side-effects that nearly killed him) the price he had to pay for a little physical release? If so, what a horrid, buttoned-up existence the Time Lords led - and no wonder the Doctor had run away from them.

But what she felt was more likely was that something unknown (to her) had caused the regeneration failure, and the sudden interest in sex with virtual strangers was part of a mortality kick. It was psychological. It was a reaction to the realisation that he was vulnerable. He reckoned he was going to die soon and forever, and was attempting to take advantage of all he'd missed out on, and live life to the fullest. Perhaps in another one of his incarnations, it would have been good food or base-jumping or reading books he'd never got round to. Apparently, the tenth body felt that beautiful women were the best that life had to offer. As hollow and rejected as it made her feel that he was going _out_ for that sort of satisfaction, it gave her a sense of peace to believe that she understood why.

Although, it did not explain the cyclical nature of the behaviour. Why did it take two nights? Why was it always preceded by an extraordinarily foul mood?

But, now she could better understand what he'd meant when he'd said that he was going through a "rough patch," and he wasn't sure how to work it out. Now she could better understand why he wouldn't talk to her about it, and why his moods were so up-and-down. Realisations of mortality do strange things to the psyche, and people go through all sorts of stages, from denial to deep sadness to acceptance and back again.

* * *

"Martha, I'm going out," he announced one evening, about five days after the overdose.

And so it went. Another conversation in which Martha offered to help, but the Doctor made excuses about being "cooped-up," needing "space," needing to clear his head...

"Doctor, just remember, you've just had a _nasty _infection. You don't want to go giving this thing to anyone. Or catching anything else!"

"What would make you say that?" he asked, looking at her suspiciously. "Who would I give it to?"

She put one hand on her hip. "Are you going to tell me that you are going to go out and have no human contact whatsoever? We both know you will."

He narrowed his eyes and looked her over. For a brief moment, she wondered if she'd said too much, but for once, she didn't care what he thought. So what if he was on to her, and the fact that she was onto him? It might finally bring this bloody farce to a close.

"Fine, go, if you have to," she conceded, waving him off. "Just... don't do anything stupid."

"Thank you for the advice," he said flatly, turning to walk away.

"Am I to assume you'll be out two nights in a row?"

"Probably."

"Then I will see you day after tomorrow. I don't want to deal with your mood swings tomorrow, all right?"

"Fine."

"By the way, where are we?"

"Amsterdam again," he said, stopping at the end of the hall, just before turning a corner.

"Again? Why come back here?"

"I dunno. I just liked it."

"Are we in the same week as last time?"

"The time has roughly been the same as for us - a month or six weeks."

"Are you following up with a friend?" she asked, not bothering to be cryptic anymore.

"No," he said, wrinkling his nose. "What friends do I have in Amsterdam?"

"Good night, Doctor," she said, shutting her bedroom door.


	11. Chapter 11

**The first half of this chapter is a whole lotta ruminating! So much of this story is taking place inside Martha's head, I thought it might be time for a full-on, stream-of-consciousness _what the hell is going on _exposition before _the next big reveal_ is made in the second half! **

**So yeah, a reveal is in store. But before that, I hope you find Martha's mind interesting; I worked hard on her thoughts. Especially the part where she wonders about the Doctor's usual nature, and how she doesn't know him too well. There's something a little chilling about it, even if she doesn't fully believe it herself...**

* * *

**11**

He was out again, "clearing his head," so she walked along a canal just off Leidseplein where they had parked the TARDIS once more, doing a little "head clearing" of her own.

She had posited that his behaviour was the result of something ravaging his system, a psychological response to his own mortality. Of course, she had no proof of her hypothesis, and she didn't _know _anything about the process of regeneration, other than what he had told her, so it would be difficult to do any investigating on her own.

What she _did _know was that the dark moods weren't aimed at her - she just happened to be in the way of them, which often happens to the person in closest proximity to someone who is dynamic, but tortured. She knew that the sex wasn't about sex, necessarily. Perhaps it wasn't even about lust or attraction either. Above all, she was bearing in mind that she didn't really have a right to be upset about the Doctor's sex life, on principle. She was not his wife or girlfriend - he was technically free to sleep with whomever he liked. Her attention should be focused on _why_, not on _how could he do this to me. _None of it, in fact, was even _about_ her, rationally speaking.

But her feelings for him made it about her. She couldn't help it. So, feeling cast off once again, she passed by a busy terrace where couples were mingling and noisily, steadily growing cosier. A dining boat passed, and she saw the like there. Normally, she was not one to over-identify with impersonal scenarios, but she couldn't shake the reminder that the Doctor was likely out here somewhere doing the same sort of thing. He was probably on a terrace or in a restaurant or at a bar, sitting across from a stunning woman, priming to literally woo the pants off her.

It was a circular train of thought, because thinking of the Doctor with a stranger always led to "Why not me?" And after a bit of reflection, "Why, at all?" Then, "What's wrong?" Which led her back to the original point, that he's acting out because something's gone wonky with his ability to regenerate. And though she was more or less clueless about the Time Lords, she reckoned that facing mortality, for a man whose race once stared into eternity, must be sobering indeed.

Briefly, she revisited the worst-nightmare scenario which had occurred to her outside Honey-Graham's flat in New York: what if he was shopping for a new companion? But she dismissed that idea in relatively short order. If that were the case, why is he shagging them? Sexual compatibility was obviously not a prerequisite for travelling with the Doctor, because _she _was travelling with him, wasn't she?

But, wait. What if her adventures with him were the anomaly, and _this_ was the norm? Admittedly, she hadn't known him for that long, and she didn't know him _that_ well. Had she got it all wrong on him? Had the true rebounding from Rose manifested in a _temporary_ self-imposed disinterest in and/or embargo on the opposite sex? And was he now over it, and returning to his "old" ways as an out-all-night womanizer? And if that were true, where did she, Martha, fit in? For that matter, where had Rose fit in? Could a _man like that _really have loved her as much as it seemed he had?

He wasn't a _man like that_, though. He couldn't be, because he had clearly stated that he was going through a rough patch, and wasn't sure what to do about it. So, back to square one. Mortality at the door, ushering in Doctor Barfly.

But this was Amsterdam! If what he wanted was sex, couldn't he just pop on over to the red light district and pay for it? That sort of thing was legal here, and the ladies of the night were skilled and disease-free, and just as gorgeous as any girl he'd meet in a tavern! And, he wouldn't have to work so hard for it. Why was he bothering with the seduction scene, and the whole first night of talking and connecting until all hours?

But Martha understood the objective there, and why it worked so damned well. She could remember that feeling of being with someone new, and how exhilarating it could be when you realised the sun had come up, and you hadn't noticed the time passing because you'd been _talking_. Talking about your past, opening up about your hopes and dreams, and it feels like you've found a soul mate. Adrenaline begins to pump, and you start thinking about a _relationship_, perhaps long-term or forever with this person. You want to give yourself over completely, especially if they've been telling you how they're looking for _the one. _You want to be _the one _for them, you'll do anything to have them see you in that light.

She had fallen into that little trap more than once with lesser men than the Doctor; she felt it was part of human nature. She couldn't imagine the excitement of actually falling into it _with the Doctor_.

Actually, she could. Which was, of course, part of what made this whole farce such a painful drama to her. The desire to "fall into it" with him, and also the knowledge that it was, ultimately, a trap! The desire to help him because she loved him, but also the disgust at seeing what he was doing, and the knowledge that he was doing it on purpose!

"Blimey," she said aloud. "And he's not even showing them the inside of the TARDIS. If he did that, he'd have them..."

A number of vulgar phrases came to mind to finish that sentence, and she decided not to voice them. Largely because she realised that _she_ fit into that category, at least somewhat. Naturally, she liked to think that she was a damn sight cleverer than the women he was choosing to pull in from pubs, and that he was a lot more selective with travelling companions. But honestly, that first night with him in that alley, if he had ordered her to her knees, could she really say she wouldn't have willingly...

She sighed and swore, disgusted with herself, as she crossed a street and was nearly run down by a man on a bicycle.

Clearly, _smitten _was the effect he wanted, the idea that these ladies were finding _the one_, and that they were the one for him, that they were rescuing an inexplicably lonely handsome guy from his own inner turmoil. Why go through all of that first-night nonsense, just to lure the lady into bed for one night, and quite literally disappear off the face of the planet the next morning?

So, it's not about just sex. And he's obviously not interested in a relationship.

"Then what?" she said aloud again, this time stopping in her tracks beside an iron rail. "You can't be _that_ big of a prat, can you?"

If it could be assumed that he was doing the same thing over and over again in each city, the kill and drill model she had seen with Honey-Graham in New York, it occurred to her that the scenario that the Doctor was continually carrying out was the most humiliating possible for the woman. The reel-in with an instant emotional connection, the bedding within twenty-four hours, then the morning-after jilt. Sure, plenty of people shag on the first or second date, but if it's a conscious decision they're making for a one-night stand, that was different than being with someone with whom one thinks one has a genuine connection, only to find one had been duped.

Was he going for the maximum pain?

Whether that was his intention or not, it's what he was causing. She turned on her heel and marched back to the TARDIS. This had to stop _right now,_ and there were two ways she could think of to do that. One was confronting him, and required the Doctor's presence. The other only required _evidence_ of his presence.

* * *

_Evidence _of the Doctor's presence. Some of his genetic material.

While snooping about in the lab during the Doctor's illness, she had run across a file cabinet with DNA profiles on various characters. The names of companions he had mentioned popped up, adversaries, names she didn't recognise at all... and the Doctor's profile was included as well. She had made a mental note of it, even though at the time, she'd had no real idea how serious a pickle they were in. Tonight as she re-entered that same lab, she was very glad that she had taken the time to clean up properly and to set aside the excess of the sample she had taken from him, to keep it correctly stored.

She flipped on the lights and pulled on a lab coat that had been hanging by the door, rolled up the very long sleeves and tied back her hair. She went straight for the DNA profiles. The Doctor's own file was quite thick, and upon inspection, she saw that there was a separate profile for each regeneration. She went for the latest one, number ten.

The standard arrangement of alleles of a human DNA profile that she was used to looking at, it was of no use to her. She was staring at a complex table of hashes, dots and lines in-between that meant absolutely nothing to her. She wasn't sure if it was just a really complicated map of the same sort of thing she had seen before, or if it was something else entirely. Something told her it was a little of both, and that the question could not be answered in a black or white way.

She sighed and set the table aside, and looked in the file for more guidance. She found more of the same - page after page of Time Lord proteins and chromosomes, mapped out like a big, insane spider's web. Good grief, he _was_ a complex character. And as Martha knew, the more complex a system is, the more possibility there was that something could go wrong, and the less provocation it took.

And after digging for another minute, she found what looked like a flat fibreglass box, attached to a thick card. It was labelled "Sample, #10 / 25 December, 2005 / Earth - London." Inside the box was a bit of blood, and attached was one very delicate microscopic slide. She located a dropper from a drawer nearby, and put one pin-sized droplet onto the slide.

She had somewhat worked out how to use the computer equipment before, when she'd found the Doctor had a cold, but she suspected that she'd had a little help from the TARDIS itself. She hoped that she and the great vessel could be clever together again. She looked over some of the ports and cables, and saw a flat, rectangular slot just about the size of the slide. She fitted it in, and then a green light came on just above the slot. The light indicated what looked like a tiny camera, attached to another slide, controlled by a small arm. She manually pressed the camera slide against the blood droplet, and the computer made a blip, and the DNA profile appeared on-screen.

"Thank you," she said aloud, fairly certain this time that the TARDIS had helped.

But the profile was exactly what she had seen on the hard copies, and it was utterly confusing to her. It seemed like nonsense.

She wondered aloud, "I wonder if all of this is visible on a double helix, like human DNA."

With that, the screen changed, and she was looking at a sextuple-helix, the nineteen proteins meshing in-between in what looked to her like complete disarray.

"Whoa!" she exclaimed. "Thank you, again!"

She squinted at it with curiosity, but it didn't tell her anything. Looking at parts of the Doctor's genetic code was fascinating on one level, but she had no idea what any of it meant or how to fix it.

Besides, if this sample had been taken when he first regenerated into the "tenth" Doctor, then this sample wouldn't be pertinent anyway. She mentally scolded herself. What she needed was a _recent_ sample.

She went to cold storage and pulled the sample she had taken herself. It was a few weeks old, but it had definitely been taken _after _the Doctor began acting strangely. She cleaned the tiny fibreglass slide with disinfectant and repeated the process. This time, the computer pulled up the helix view straight away.

"Do you know which locus contains the code for regeneration?" she asked aloud, now fully aware that she was talking to the TARDIS. But no answer came, and she reckoned she might have asked too much. Perhaps the TARDIS didn't mind guiding her to a certain point, but when it came to actually working out the problem, well, then...

For several minutes, she simply stared at the mesh of digital imagery, rather abstract representations of everything the Doctor was.

And suddenly, there was a shift. Proteins detached and reattached themselves in the blink of an eye. She almost didn't see it, and it was over.

"What was that?" she asked. "Oh, my God! Do that again!"

But as she knew, it wasn't the TARDIS or the computer causing the change. The Doctor's DNA was showing mutation right before her eyes! She had only seen this phenomenon once before, and she had told the Doctor at the time that it was impossible.

"Lazarus," she whispered.

* * *

She had poked her finger and drawn a few drops of blood, and the computer had aided her in looking at her own DNA profile. She had watched the double-helix for forty-five minutes, but nothing changed. There was no sign of mutation or recombining or anything "impossible" in her DNA.

The more complex a system is, the more possibility there is that something can go wrong, and the less provocation it takes.

She and the Doctor had both been in that Lazarus machine for only about thirty seconds while it was running, but only one of them had been affected. His DNA had been jostled, hers had not. Hers was simple and steadfast and reliable. His was ridiculously complicated, not to mention changeable by nature; those qualities put it at risk. His regeneration ability was either eradicated or diminished, which, if the Doctor's explanation of the Lazarus experiment was to be believed, was something that evolution had cast off millions of years before in the Time Lord gene pool.

But knowing this didn't help. She still had no clue what to do about it.


	12. Chapter 12

**Well, the Doctor deserves a punch in the face, but he won't get it.**

**But his assholery doesn't last long this time...**

* * *

**12**

She had no idea what she was going to accomplish by sitting in front of the computer screen and watching the Doctor's sextuple-helix mutate before her eyes while eating a sandwich, but she had spent hours doing it. She had also pored over the profile printouts to no avail, and gone to the library to research the process of regeneration. She had learned some, but not enough to help the Doctor repair something that had shaken loose his very DNA.

By the time the Doctor came looking for her, another (almost) day-and-a-half had passed, and she had spent another thirty-six hours hiding in her room and/or in the lab. She had told him she hadn't wanted to deal with his mood swings until the second night was over-with, and he had kept away from her.

"Oi," he was saying, jostling her arm.

She sat up straight, and realised all at once that she had fallen asleep in the lab with her head on the table. She looked up at him, and felt sheepish. "Oh. Hi." She rubbed her eyes.

He smiled. "You're kind of cute when you first wake up."

"I'm kind of cute most of the time," she quipped, stretching, then she yawned. "It wouldn't kill you to say so more often."

"Touché," he replied with a smirk.

She looked him up and down properly. He was, of course, disheveled as always when stumbling in after a night out, and still wearing his long coat. "Did you just get in?"

"Yep."

"What time is it?"

"Almost nine a.m."

"Of course it is."

"What are you doing?" he asked gesturing toward the display of alleles on the screen.

"Ummmm," she answered, suddenly feeling hot and prickly all over. "It's your DNA profile."

"I can see that. Why are you looking at it?"

She sighed, and began to shiver a bit. The jig was up. It was now or never.

"Doctor, I know you're scared, and I want to help you."

"Scared of what?"

"I know what's been happening."

His eyes opened wide, and he looked to the left as though considering. Then, "_What _has been happening?"

"I know that something's gone wrong with your regeneration abilities."

He crossed his arms and looked down his nose at her. "You guessed, eh?"

"It's obvious. You said it yourself the other night... you're not supposed to get a cold or a burn scar, or a strep infection, and yet..."

"I said too much."

"It wouldn't have mattered. I'm not an idiot."

"I'm sorry to have put that on you. I was going to die, and I needed your help. If I had died that night, Martha, that would have been it for me. And you came through, like you always do - thank you."

"You said it because you needed my help, but it doesn't make it untrue. Does it?"

"No."

"I've been looking at the sextuple helix, or whatever you call it, and I've watched it zap and change and mutate. Just like what we saw under the microscope after Lazarus went through his little metamorphosis in that machine."

"Well, now that the cat is out of the bag, did you test your own DNA?"

"Yes. No change. It's just you. I reckon it's because of the complexity of the proteins and chromosomes. More complexity means more risk, yeah?"

"Clever girl," he said. He shook his head at her, in disbelief of her prowess, but confirming what she was saying.

"Not _that _clever. Because I still can't work out the locus of regeneration, and I clearly cannot help you. I'm training as a human doctor, Doctor, not as someone who would be any sort of good to you in this situation."

He smiled a little. "Hasn't stopped you from trying, I see."

"Nothing would stop me from trying to help you," she said, looking at the floor, her voice trembling. There was a pause. "But there is one thing I can help you with."

"There is?"

"Yes, Doctor. As I started to say before, I know you're scared about being suddenly mortal, but that's no reason for..."

"...for treating you the way I've been."

"Well, that too. But not just me."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean... the others."

"Others?"

"The women. I know what you've been doing. And I know that you're on some kind of mortality kick, you want to live life to the fullest, or at least that's what you _think_ you want, but all you're doing is hurting..."

"Wait a minute, what?"

"What you're doing to those women is causing them pain, you _must _know that. I understand wanting to indulge yourself, but I can't understand why you'd lay it on so thick so they'll fall for you, and then leave them after you spend the night with them. Help me to help you, Doctor. Help me understand so that we can stop the cycle."

He was staring at her, stunned. His eyes were blazing, though with what, she could not tell. At last, he clenched his jaw and growled, "What the _hell _is it to you?"

"I'm your friend! I care about what you do, what happens to you, and what kind of damage you're doing!"

"Damage? Are you... how do you even know about this?"

She sighed, and again stared at the floor. "I followed you."

"You did what?"

She shrugged. "Part of me thought you knew."

"I did _not _know! You followed me? When?" His growl was very rapidly rising in pitch.

"In New York. Both nights. You went to that martini bar, then to a brownstone. Then the second night you went to Tavern on the Green, and back to the brownstone."

"Holy shit, Martha!"

"And given the pattern... Amsterdam, Prague, New York, now Amsterdam again, two nights out in each city, a ridiculously good mood each time you're finished in a particular city... I'll assume you're doing the same thing everywhere we go. And Doctor, it has to stop! This is not the kind of man you are. You are not a womanizer."

He took two steps forward and put his hands on the table in front of her. "What happened to giving me a little space, a little latitude, like you said you would? I thought I could trust you to trust me."

She stood up from her stool. "Doctor, I'm not the sort of person who leaves my friends to languish with some world-ending problem without doing something. Especially since _you_ might have problems that actually _end the world!_ I'm sorry I promised you something that I ultimately couldn't deliver, but I'm not sorry that I followed you. Not anymore. I know it was the right thing to do."

"Well, aren't you the noble, inquisitive sort," he hissed sarcastically.

"Yes, I am, as it happens!" she shot back. "And Doctor, look. If nothing else, you can't fight off human diseases anymore! You almost died from a strep infection! If you catch something from one of these women that doesn't have a cure..."

"Oh please!" he shouted, pulling himself violently away from the table. "It's not about that! None of this is about that! And it's not about some humanitarian ideal of not emotionally inconveniencing women who are, when all is said and done, consenting adults."

"What do you mean? What is it about, then?"

He narrowed his eyes and stuck out his jaw. "Oh Martha. Do I really have to say it?"

"Apparently." Though, he really didn't.

"It's about jealousy."

She flushed all over. He had hit a nerve. It was the thing she had been struggling with since this whole ugly business began.

"Doctor, please..."

"You know I'm out with other women, you know what I'm doing with them, and you wish it could be you." His voice was low now, and steady.

"Doctor, I am capable of putting my feelings aside..."

"Do you think I don't know? Do you think I don't notice the way you look at me, or hear you when you fish for compliments and test me?"

She held her breath to fight back tears. She couldn't look him in the eye.

"Doctor, stop it."

"Well, I know. And I see it. And I hear you. And I'm onto you, Miss Jones. I know why you followed me, and why you're rooting around in my DNA and why you so badly want it to stop. Much like you, I'm not an idiot."

There was another pause while Martha collected herself. She found the mettle to look at him, and found his brown eyes boring holes into hers.

"Your mean streak is more wicked than I ever thought," she said, struggling to keep her voice even. "You can be a horrible, horrible man, you know that?"

"Yes. I know. But do you? Are you starting to see it through those starry eyes now?"

She opened her mouth to answer, but she could think of nothing that would do justice to this, the worst conversation of her life. She had no idea what she wanted to say, what she wanted from him, what she wanted out of this moment. She stood up abruptly and left the room, leaving the lab coat on the floor as she stomped out.

She made a beeline for the console room and burst through the TARDIS doors and onto the streets of a Dutch morning.


	13. Chapter 13

**The reviews on Chapter 12 were so interesting! I especially liked one that said "there such a thing as too real, and this chapter just got TOO REAL!" and the one that pointed out that perhaps Martha needed to hear what the Doctor had to say about jealousy, though perhaps not in the scathing, mean way in which he said it. Most everyone else agreed that the Doctor needs a good clocking, and that they were on pins and needles over what happens next. **

**So, because I don't have it in me to make you wait (because I know you're all sitting around with nothing else to do than bite your nails over my story (heh), I decided to go ahead and post chapter 13 today.**

**Things will start to make A LOT more sense after this... I hope, anyway.**

**Thank you for the highly emotional response thus far. You are fabulous!**

* * *

**13**

She had reached the bottom of a glass of wine, something she had never previously done at ten in the morning, but had yet to calm down.

She sat on a red velvet bench seat against the wall of a café she had chosen after running into a throng of tourists and decided to take a rest. The place had looked inviting, partly because the barkeep had been incredibly friendly and there was a black dog sprawled lazily on one of the booth seats, but mostly because it was dark. What she wanted more than anything was to crawl into a hole and never come out, but since her own corner of the world was inside a blue box occupied by a man who was possibly the universe's biggest prat, that was not an option.

The barman/barista took a spin round the room, wiping tables and picking up discarded cups, saucers and cordials. As he passed her, he asked, "More wine for the lady?"

"Just some tea, please," she said softly.

As he and turned away, Martha's phone buzzed in her pocket. She was receiving a text message.

"Where are you? We need to talk." it asked, coming from a bizarre, scrambled number which she recognised as the TARDIS' comm system.

She ignored it and shoved it back in her pocket. The barman brought her tea, and she sipped it, finally beginning to let go of the anger.

Ten minutes later, another text message. "I'm so sorry. Please let me explain. I promise to tell you everything."

She thought about it. When had he _ever_ told her _everything_? The Doctor's personal revelations were usually cryptic half-truths to keep her at arm's length, and/or on a need-to-know basis, and even then she had to bludgeon them out of him.

As she was thinking about what to do next, the phone rang properly. An actual call was coming in.

"What?" she asked.

"Good, you're alive. Where are you?"

"I'm at the train station. There's a 2:30 to Paris, then a 6:45 Eurostar back to London."

"Oh, Martha, please don't do that," he insisted. "At least wait until I have a chance to tell you the whole story."

"I don't want to hear anymore of your _give me space, give me latitude _crap. I am all out of patience, Doctor. I have _zero_ left, do you understand me? Actually I probably hit _zero_ two weeks ago, but..."

"I swear I won't give you anymore of that. I will tell you everything."

"No, you won't! Who do you think you're fooling?"

"I will. And then, if you still want to get on that train, I won't stand in your way."

She sighed. God help her, she wanted to hear the story, she _still _wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, and help him if she could. But damn it, she wanted to protect her heart as well. She _had _to. She paused a long while, and the Doctor remained expectantly silent, except for breathing.

Finally, she said, "Doctor, if you get here, and you tell me or imply in some manner that there are parts of this ugly business that I wouldn't understand or that you can't share, I will physically hurt you. I won't be able to stop myself."

"Okay."

"If you screw with me in any way, shape or form, we are done. Do you hear me? I can't take the run-around anymore."

"I won't give you the run-around. I swear it."

"One hundred per cent disclosure."

"You've got it. Just don't leave before I get there."

"You'll answer every question I ask, and you won't lie or dodge."

"I promise. Just meet me out in front of the train station in twenty minutes, in the square."

"Okay, look, I'm not at the train station," she confessed. "I'm at Café Kalkhoven, two blocks from the Anne Frank house."

"Good. I'll find you. Thank you, Martha."

* * *

About fifteen minutes later, the Doctor with his billowy coat came through the door and was greeted by the barman and the black dog. He declined the offer of a cappuccino, and earnestly made his way toward her.

"I'm sorry," he began, not sitting down yet. "For everything."

"Everything?"

"For treating you so horribly, for leaving you on your own all those nights, for being so secretive about it. I'm sorry that I put myself in a position to catch viruses and infections that you ultimately had to take care of."

She shrugged. "Okay. Keep talking."

"Mind if I sit down?"

"Go ahead."

He sat.

"Most of all, I'm sorry for what I said to you in the lab an hour ago. It was... well, er, _beyond_ out-of-line, and just plain mean. I can't believe that any of it came out of my mouth, honestly."

"Fair enough," she said, crossing her arms, looking him over.

"Martha, I fully understand that your interests don't just lie in... me. Or rather, keeping me away from other women. I know that your intentions really are noble. You're a forward-thinker, you're a doctor, you're someone that I chose to be with for a reason, and not because you... let's say, see me in an amourous light. I know that if you followed and surveilled me, it was because you felt there was danger. I know you're capable of a lot more than just being a starry-eyed sidekick. Back there in the lab, I said what I said because... I was being defensive because I'd been caught. I childishly wanted to shift the focus away from my own bad behaviour. And... I didn't want you to know what I'd been doing, and I didn't know how to handle the fact that you'd found out."

"To be fair, I didn't know how to handle the fact that I'd found out either," she conceded.

"Sure you did," he corrected. "You went into the lab to find out about my regenerative traits, and I think that's brilliant."

"I didn't learn anything useful from it," she mumbled.

"Well, that's okay. Let's just say, you were half-right."

"About what?"

"My DNA was uprooted during the time when you and I were in Lazarus' chamber, and as a result, something's gone wonky with my regenerative abilities. They're either diminished or non-functional, and frankly, I'm too afraid to find out which."

"Can't fault you for that."

"But something else happened in that chamber. Remember how I said that the life-sucking Lazarus monster was a version of humankind that had been cast off as an option by evolution millions of years ago?"

"Yes."

"Well, something like that happened to me as well. Martha, using these women, hopping from city to city... it's not because I'm suffering from a mortality kick."

"It's coded in your bizarre DNA now," she realised. "How the hell does that work?"

"The machine morphed Lazarus into something that oscillated between man and a _literal _snarling monster, and _literally_ sucked the life out of people."

"I know. I was there, remember?"

"You were also there when I said that I am a creature of the abstract. My survival is not rooted in the material world so much as it is in concepts."

"I remember you saying that. You were recovering from your very first common cold."

"So what do you think happens when the Lazarus machine gets hold of a creature of the abstract with super-complex DNA?"

Martha stared at him for a few seconds, the tip of his tongue perched expectantly against his top front teeth.

"Okay, I see what you're saying, but you're going to have to get a whole lot more specific," she said.

"The machine morphed me into something that oscillates between a Time Lord and a _metaphorical_ snarling monster (which is really just me, in a monumentally bad mood), whose guts are almost literally boiling with hunger, with need. But instead of satisfying that need by sucking life..."

"...you're using sex."

"Yeah, but not because I choose to. I don't need a life force like Lazarus did - that's too simple, too literal. I need... I don't know how to describe it. Ardour. Passion. Frenzy, fire, fervour. But plain old lust won't do it - there has to be something else, something deeper involved..."

"Which is why you'd have to spend two nights. The first for setting up the pins, and the second for knocking them down."

"A very succinct way of putting it."

"More specifically, you feed them some lines, lay it on real thick and make them think you have a true connection, so that when you actually..."

He nodded. "If they think they're falling for me, and oh-so-quickly, then I get some actual ardour or passion or fire from them when we're in bed together."

"And it doesn't bother you that you're causing them pain?"

"Of course it bothers me, Martha!" he all but shouted. "That's why I told you I don't know what to do about it! I know that I can't go on leaving a trail of broken hearts all over this planet. I mean, I could, but... I can't. You were right when you said that's not the sort of man I am, and when I'm in my right mind, I know that. Even Lazarus was a relatively sane man before the monster was unlocked."

"It seemed like Lazarus' monster took up residence and stayed," she said. "Since he was so sure, even when he looked like a human, that the collateral damage was worth it. Your monster..."

"...comes and goes. And is, again, abstract. It manifests as meanness and irritability."

"And is sated by... the ardour."

"Yes. Temporarily."

"When it first emerged, how did you... I mean... did you feel that you just... sorry, I'm having trouble understanding how all of this came about. How did you feel? How did you know what to do? How did you wind up in a bar on the pull?"

He sighed. "When Lazarus first turned into the literal monster, he knew he needed sustenance, and he reached out to the first human life force nearby: Lady Thaw. My guess is that he wasn't conscious of what he needed until he did that, and it was base, instinctual. For me, the monster rose slowly as it does, and when I felt the hunger, I reached out to you. Or, at least... I wanted to. Started to."

"Reach out... to _me_?"

"Of course. Who else?"

"Where was I when this happened?"

"Well, thankfully, blissfully unaware of how predatory I was. Fortunately, I stopped myself before you even became cognizant that anything was going on, because a glimmer of understanding registered somehow, and I realised..."

He took a pause and swallowed hard.

"You realised what?" she asked, afraid of the answer.

"I realised that I could _use_ you that way, possibly indefinitely."

"Oh. Wow."

"Unlike Lazarus, I worked out what I needed before I ever got it, and I knew I could get it from you."

She again found herself staring into her teacup. "Yes, you could have. It would have been frighteningly easy, actually."

"But you are my best friend," he said.

"I know, I know," she sighed. "I'm familiar with the _let's not ruin our friendship_ song and dance."

"It wasn't that. It's the fact that I see you every day and we have an investment in each other. But..."

"But what?"

"But I'm not in love with you," he told her with sadness in his eyes. "And that's what makes the equation unbalanced. And the fact that we're so close means that if I hurt you that way, I couldn't just walk away from it, not ever. The alternative would have been to lie to you about my feelings, and that would have been even worse."

"So you chose to annihilate strangers instead."

He shrugged. "I could either annihilate you in the long-term, or strangers in the short-term. Given the choice, I went with the option that didn't mean I'd have to look you in the eye and tell you I'd used you, _knowing_ I was going to break your heart. Call me a coward, but I couldn't bear the thought of that."

She nodded slowly, not making eye-contact. "I see now why you didn't think you could share this with me."

There was a long silence in which Martha ordered another tea, and one for her friend, and the Doctor just waited. He gave her time to process, to decide what to say or do next.

Something occurred to her. "You know, Doctor, you're not really in any shape to be playing fast and loose exchanging bodily fluids with people you barely know."

"I'm aware."

"Is this really survival for you? I mean, will you die if you don't have the ardour?"

"I honestly don't know," he told her. "I haven't let it get to a dire point yet, and like you just said: I'm in no shape to be playing games with what might or might not kill me."

"What's your guess?"

"My guess is yes, I would eventually die. But it would take a while. I would... waste away. I guess."

"And you wouldn't regenerate."

"Nope. Not with the way things are."

"I assume that you've been studying the problem, working on a solution, yeah?"

"Of course."

"Well, what can I do to help?" she asked. "Now that I know what's going on, I want to help more than ever! I mean, I know nothing about Time Lord DNA - I was worse than useless in that lab. But now that we're working together, maybe we can get something accomplished."

He nodded. "It can't hurt to have another set of eyes and ears," he said. "My own set haven't done me much bloody good thus far. I've got a separate lab, a secret one, that I've been using to build a machine, trying to replicate the process that Lazarus set in motion. I've done that, but I can't work out how to make it attack a specific locus in my DNA and then do what I want it to do... also without jostling anything else loose."

"How long have you been working on it?"

"Five, maybe six weeks. Been stalled out for almost four."

"I will do my best for you. Just tell me how."


	14. Chapter 14

**Drama, drama, drama! **

**This chapter is short but sweet, and introduces a lovely lady named Jana... **

**But don't get too attached to her. She's simply here to prove a point.**

* * *

**14**

They stood up to leave Café Kalkhoven. The Doctor paid the bill and they went back out onto the street.

"Where did you park the TARDIS?" she asked.

"I didn't move it. I took the tram down here."

They hurried through a mob of tourists lined up outside the Anne Frank house, and waiting at the tour-boat stop across the street. They caught the tram just as it pulled up, and they hopped on, several people from the throng hopping on behind them. The Doctor pressed the psychic paper to the card reader twice, and the vehicle took off, nearly taking them off their feet in the process.

They each found a semi-uncomfortable place to stand, facing one another with one hand over their heads holding onto metal rings for leverage. As they did, a woman's voice said, "Hello, John."

The Doctor turned, and standing behind him was a stunning blonde with the colour of polite, restrained fury, all over her face. She was small, perhaps an inch even shorter than Martha, and had the biggest icy blue eyes Martha had ever seen.

"Jana," the Doctor said, the name tumbling out of his mouth almost without his permission. "What... how... hi."

"Who's this?" she asked with a sweetly sickening smile, nodding in Martha's direction.

"This is my friend Martha," he said. "Martha, this is Jana. We met oh, about a month ago."

Martha understood. This was the Doctor's first overnight friend, from the last time they'd been in Amsterdam. She recognised a distinctly crazed look in the woman's eye, and she felt sure that this meeting on the tram was not a coincidence.

"How have you been?" the Doctor asked her, unsure what else to say.

"How have I been?" Jana repeated, her perfect teeth clenched, her voice low. "I should be asking, how have _you _been! Since I haven't seen nor heard from you in thirty-four days, I wouldn't know! How _have _you been, John?"

"Oh, busy," he replied, nodding emphatically. "Very, very busy. Haven't had much time for a personal life. Sorry I didn't call you..."

"And yet, you have time to spend with _this _little tart," Jana said tightly, still maintaining a sarcastic smile.

"Oi!" Martha protested.

"And a different one last night, and the night before, as well!" Jana added.

"What, have you been following me too?" the Doctor wanted to know. He was struggling to keep his voice even and not cause a scene in a crowded carriage.

"Well, after you gave me your number which turned out to be the number to a pizza shop in Bergen, and promised to call me the very next night after we made love, and then I didn't hear from you for over a month, I started to get worried," she chirped with an eerie intensity in her voice. "I showed your picture to some friends of mine, and one of them recognised you last night, and snapped a photo of you with that _other _tart, the one with the curly black hair, and sent it to me. I was going to confront you, but... I just couldn't. I couldn't, John. So I just came and watched you. Watched you with _her_."

Martha felt sheepish. She had done the same thing, though for very different reasons. Still, it was creepy, and she knew it.

"And then when you went home, you seemed to disappear into Leidseplein square, and I didn't know where your flat was. So today, I came back to Leidseplein to see if I could find you, and there you were. And you went off to meet _yet another_ woman!" Jana indicated Martha, looking her over with contempt.

"Jana, I'm sorry," he began. "Just listen..."

"Save it," she snapped, momentarily losing her smile. And then it was back. She looked at Martha. "And what about you? Did you know he was with someone else the last two nights? I hope you know what you're getting into, little miss."

"Oh, I think it's becoming amply clear what we're into," Martha replied, glancing up at the Doctor.

"Did you meet him in a bar?" she asked Martha. "Did he tell you how lonely he was, how he never goes out to meet people because he's been hurt, and hasn't found the right girl?"

"I... I... honestly have no idea how to answer that," Martha replied. It was the truth. She was at a loss for how to proceed. Should she act as though she were surprised and indignant at the Doctor's behaviour, or just roll with it like usual? Which was least likely to cause a scene and guarantee them all a front-page headline?

Jana snapped, "Has he got you into bed yet? Although, from the looks of you, you'd probably spread your legs in the street!"

Before Martha could throw a punch, however, the Doctor interceded. "Whoa! Now! Listen, there's no need for this, Jana! Just calm down."

"Just... who was she? Hunh? Tell me that - the one with the curly hair. Who was she, John, that she was so much more important than me?"

Her voice had risen to a squeaky pitch by the end of that sentence, and Martha was beginning to grow frightened, as opposed to just uneasy. She had a very bad feeling about this woman.

"What do you mean _who was she_?" the Doctor asked.

Jana narrowed her eyes in an oddly sharp way, and looked at Martha once more. It felt like her eyes were drilling lasers into Martha's skull as she said, "I've got this one's number, this _Martha_." She whined the name in a mocking way. "Now tell me who the other one was. The other black-haired bitch that you cheated on me with, the one from last night."

Now, her tone had gone cold, and people were starting to become aware. They were trying not to stare, however, the atmosphere had changed in the tram.

"Cheated on you?" he asked.

"Just tell me her name," she said, her eyes closed, voice trembling. "Just a name, that's all. So I can have closure, and you and I can move on from this, and start a new life together, free of any baggage. Okay?"

Martha and the Doctor looked at each other, growing more and more wary of this increasingly unhinged, very territorial woman.

"Listen, Jana," Martha interjected. "We're at our stop, and we have an important appointment, so..."

The tram came to a halt, and Martha made to move toward the door.

Jana stepped in her way, and hissed in her ear, very subtly, "I don't think so, bitch. You'll get off this tram when I say you do."

And Martha felt something hard pressing into her stomach. She looked down, and in the small space between her and the crazy blonde, there was a gun.


	15. Chapter 15

**So, as I said, Jana mostly exists to prove a point... Martha will eventually give us some context, but not just yet.**

**I'm so enjoying the reviews. My favorite thought of the last few days is, " 'Cause really, why _wouldn't_ she be completely nuts?"**

* * *

**15**

Martha gasped. She had stared down the barrel of many a laser beam, disintegrator and death ray, but a good old-fashioned pistol pressed into her flesh at point-blank by an all-too-human human? That was a new experience.

The Doctor didn't notice at first, and made to step off the tram.

"Doctor!" she called out, not wanting to be left behind on the tram with a madwoman and a group of strangers.

Jana's attention was drawn to the Doctor. She recklessly shouted, "No, John!" and turned toward him, exposing her weapon and causing gasps and yells from people around them. Several more people screamed and hopped off the tram to escape, just before the doors shut and the big blue vehicle took off again.

The Doctor held up his hands in a disarmed stance and backed away from her clumsily, as the rough ride took him off balance. Martha joined him, backing off. Some people looked on in horror, inching toward the door, waiting for the tram to stop again, while a few others watched with a careful eye.

"Doctor?" asked Jana. "Is that what he told you? Why did you tell me you sold insurance? And what did you tell the one from last night, eh? What do you _really _do, John?"

"None of that matters, because..." Martha began.

"Jana," the Doctor interrupted. "This is not a choice you want to make. What happened to working with children, and making a difference in their lives? Isn't that what you told me?"

"What do you care?" she asked. "You just listened to me talk so you could get me into bed!"

"Fine, okay, I did," he confessed. "But the point is, I listened! And what I heard, I liked! You have so much potential... what the hell are you doing on this tram with that gun? Don't you understand, you'll _never_ be able to do what you want, _ever, _if you continue this? Working with children after you held a bunch of people hostage at gunpoint, in a public place?"

She burst into tears. "I thought we had something."

"I'm sorry you thought that," he said, trying to step forward. She shoved the gun at him, showing that even sobbing, she would not budge. "I mean, I'm sorry that I made you think that. I am entirely to blame for that. I wish I could take it all back..." With that, he looked meaningfully at Martha. "I wish I could take it all back."

"Damn it! Look at me, not at her!" Jana screamed. "I'll shoot her right here! Don't think I won't"

At that point, the tram stopped and the doors flew open. Although, anyone who made any move toward the door was stopped with a threat of a bullet to the back if they got any closer to the exit. A few people got off anyhow, most did not dare. Anyone waiting to board the tram gasped and ran.

Over Jana's shoulder, Martha had seen enough people on their mobile phones, she imagined that the police would be waiting for them at one of the next few stops. She tried to focus on that, and not on fear or the insanity of humankind, or the horrible luck that had brought them to this moment.

Once again, the doors slammed shut and the tram moved. Two men who had been standing nearby were watching the situation closely, and began inching forward.

"Just tell me who you were with last night, John," Jana said, trying to get under control. She was taking deep, noisy breaths and letting them out quickly. "Tell me who she was, or so help me, I'll kill this one!" She pointed the gun at Martha once more.

"I'm not going to do that, Jana," the Doctor said. "This is crazy. Just hand over the gun - you will never get what you want this way."

She seemed to come even more unhinged at that moment. "Don't _fucking_ call me crazy! Is it crazy to believe in a man who tells me he's looked his whole life for someone like me? That he wants _to love_, that he just needs a kind-hearted woman to settle down with? Is it crazy to feel something for you when you tell me about how your ex-wife hurt you so much you thought you'd never love again, and you tell me I may have the potential to change your mind? Is it crazy to want to be with you, just to want to hold you?"

"Ex-wife?" Martha asked.

"Shhh," the Doctor urged.

"Is it crazy to think we had a connection, when we spent all night up together, just talking. No games, no superficial rubbish, just _talking_. You told me your hopes and dreams. You told me about your childhood in Kent, how the other kids used to make fun of you because you had a lazy eye, and you didn't have your first kiss until you were twenty-two! Is it crazy to believe in those things? Is it crazy?"

He sighed. "No, none of that is crazy."

What he didn't say, Martha knew, was, "Believing it all - it's exactly what I needed from you."

One of the men behind her got closer, and she turned suddenly, shoving the gun at him and screamed, "Get the hell away from me! Don't touch me!"

The Doctor took the opportunity. He lurched forward and grasped her around the arms and torso, catching her off-guard and causing her to drop the gun. She screamed and cried, begged to be let go. After Martha kicked the gun away, and someone else picked it up, holstering it in his waistband, the Doctor did let go. Jana fell to her knees and wept.

"Help me," she sniffled in-between sobs.

He knelt beside her. "I'll do my best," he whispered, placing his hand on her shoulder.

"Not you, you bastard," she spat. She pushed him away with both hands, and he stood up, again, disarmed. A woman from the crowd came forward and shrugged at the Doctor, helping Jana to her feet. The tram stopped, and the police were waiting in front of the bench, ready to haul her in.


	16. Chapter 16

**This is the talking-to the Doctor needs, I think we all can agree, except perhaps without the violence that many of us would like to rain upon him. Isn't Martha just a NICE, NICE person? Love her.**

* * *

**16**

Giving statements had taken a few hours, since there had been so many witnesses. Many of them said they felt for her, because she seemed more disturbed and desperate, than actually homicidal. The Doctor had had to go through the humiliating business of explaining his brief but intense relationship with her, and why she was so upset with him. He could feel the air of judgement from the female officer as he spoke, and knew that he absolutely deserved it.

And then, much as he had done with Jana, and with at least three other women in the past month or so, he gave them false contact information and promised to be in touch, before disappearing from the face of the Earth.

* * *

Jana had been relatively easy to subdue. But the incident had served as one hell of a wake-up call.

"So, basically, we have some pretty compelling evidence that your late-night shenanigans have turned at least one woman into a semi-homicidal maniac," Martha commented, entering the TARDIS with the Doctor just behind her.

"I don't think she was really all that homicidal, but... yes, it would seem that your point stands to reason," he replied, frowning, and locking the door, just in case. He walked steadily up the ramp and flipped a few gears on the console. He was, as he had told Martha a few minutes before, keen to get them the hell out of Amsterdam.

"Did she seem unstable when you were... wooing her?"

"No, of course not. She was elegant and fun," he told her.

"Doctor, how many of the others were _elegant and fun?_" she asked.

"Do you mean, rhetorically, how many other potential nutters am I planning on shagging?"

"Sure, that's one way of putting it."

He sighed, and sat himself down on the navigator's seat. "It's a fair point, but I don't know, Martha. I just don't know."

"Actually, Doctor, you know as well as I do that the odds of you randomly pulling in another one who's trigger-happy, well, they're not that great. But a person doesn't have to have a gun to do damage. They're young, they're hurt - they're bound to drum up some drama somewhere."

"Are you saying we should track them down and troubleshoot?"

"No, that might actually make things worse. I'm just saying that... Jana had a gun. She may not have used it, but look at how much trouble she caused for herself nonetheless. The woman in Prague might just be angry enough to take it out on someone at work, and get fired, and get stuck in a dead-end call-centre job for the next five years."

"Martha."

"It sounds silly, but it's the kind of stuff that happens when guys act like cads, Doctor. I'm not certain you are fully congnizant of the damage this can do to a woman's self-esteem. There's anger, there's depression, there's insecurity and anxiety... _Why didn't he call? What did I do wrong? Am I not pretty enough? Maybe if I lost ten pounds, or changed my hair... Was he disgusted when he saw me naked? I'm sure it's the cottage cheese in my arse!"_

"What?" he asked, high-pitched and disbelieving.

"Seriously."

"Cottage cheese?"

"It's a thing."

"Are you talking from experience?"

"Somewhat. I was once nineteen and convinced of my own inferiority. Fortunately, I grew up, but not everyone does, to which we were witness today. You must have known that, even when you started all this rubbish," she said. And she paused for effect, then added, "And you take rejection, anger and a low self-image, mix them with hormones and alcohol, and you get..."

"Western civilisation?"

She sighed, walked up close and took both of his hands. She looked at him squarely, seriously. "Doctor, you can't keep doing this."

The Doctor stared at his hands in hers, and said softly, "Laura has a big, bad, jock of an ex-boyfriend with whom she seems to have a semi-co-dependent, intermittently sexual relationship. Always dysfunctional, always ending with jealous rages and calls to the police. She goes back to him periodically and she says it always starts with some personal nose-dive that drives her there, then the whole thing tosses her in a shame spiral that she can't get out of for a few months..."

"Who's Laura?" she asked.

"New York," he answered. "The one you saw."

"Ah."

"Why did it never register with me, even when she was telling me about the dysfunctional ex, that I could be sending her right back to that place?"

"Well, because you were just trying to survive, and not get involved, Doctor. And, because you're used to thinking of the consequences of your actions in terms of _will it destroy the universe _or _will it conjure up a long-dormant demon that will end life as we know it_."

"Have I lost the ability to recognise small-scale destruction?"

"No, not completely. You're recognising it now, aren't you?"

"After I was hit over the head with it, yeah."

"Well, that's why you have me."

"That's very, very true, Martha."

She let go of his hands and leaned against the console. "Anyway, it's useless to dwell on it - the damage is done. Now, let's just make sure you don't do anymore. We have to get to work on that pod you've been building."

"Stalled out, remember?"

"Well, get un-stalled, and let me help you."

"How are you going to do that?"

"I don't know. I reckoned I'd wait for you to tell me."

"Soon as I work it out, I'll let you know."

There was a pause, and then Martha had to know something. "Doctor, why _did _we come back to Amsterdam? Why in God's name would you return to the scene of the crime?"

He sighed. "There was a restaurant I liked, just off from the Dam Square. I'd used it for the second night... moving in for the kill, as it were. Sumptuous décor - everything in red and black, meals designed for two people to feed to each other... the place is like an aphrodisiac wrapped in brick, plaster and wallpaper."

"So you came back because it worked."

He nodded.

"Didn't all those places work, Tavern on the Green and whatnot? I mean, coupled with your unique charms, of course."

"Yeah, but this one worked on me, too. Almost made me believe my own lies."

"Wow. That _is _powerful."

He nodded again.

* * *

In an unfamiliar room, in a part of the TARDIS where Martha had never ventured before today, the Doctor was on his knees in front of a big, chrome contraption that was covered in wires and duct tape. He was sonicking something, and cursing under his breath.

Martha walked in from an adjacent lab, and said, "Okay, let's have you now." She held out her hand.

"What?" he asked, looking up at her, blinking.

"Come with me, I'm taking bloods."

"Why?"

"I'm going to check you for every human disease there is, especially the ones you can get from..."

"Playing Parcheesi?" he asked with a frown.

"Yes, Parcheesi," she answered. "Let's just go with that."

He groaned. "Really Martha?"

"Yes, really," she replied. "You've been Parcheesing total strangers, Doctor."

"Okay, fine, I'll come with you." He sighed and stood up, shedding his jacket and tossing the sonic on the floor.

"It's fairly unlikely you'll have anything fatal, since most STD's can be treated with penicillin, and you've had that in your system for a few days for the strep infection," she said, as she strode down the hall in front of him. "But we can't be too careful. There are things you can catch that can't be treated with penicillin, not to mention viruses that incubate, like..."

"Martha, can we not _talk_ about it? I'll accept that it needs to be done, but committing it to language is just a step I don't think I can take."

"Hm, okay," she sniffed. "Suit yourself."

So, mostly in silence, she took as much blood as she safely could (assuming that the maximum safe volume for a human being of the Doctor's height and weight would be roughly correct), and stored it in seven separate vials.


	17. Chapter 17

**Well, I believe this chapter contains a game-changer... hope you enjoy!**

* * *

**17**

Forty-eight hours later, much to Martha's surprise, the Doctor had been cleared of all human diseases (with a little help from the TARDIS), with the exception of a bit of lingering benign strep.

But, he was no closer to working out how to force the quasi-Lazarus machine to narrow down a locus, and modify it the way he needed it to. He remained on the floor with his sonic and some wires, a computer screen, sleeves rolled up and a scowl. Martha stayed with him and listened as he tried to talk through it, and helped as much as she could and/or was allowed.

* * *

Seventy-two hours later, he was in the same boat, now cursing every few minutes, and asking the walls bitterly why, oh why, he couldn't just isolate one bloody locus!

"Do you not know the locus, or is it a mechanical problem?" she asked. She was standing nearby, looking over profiles of alleles that had so confounded her a few days before. Only now, she was staring at two of them, as they had taken bloods again and made another profile, slightly different because of the modifications made by Richard Lazarus' original contraption.

"It's the machine, not the DNA itself," he told her, annoyed. He pointed at a cluster of spiderweb-thin lines on one of the allele maps and said, "This is the protein combo for regeneration, which I reckon is priority number one."

"Of course."

"But how do I make them recombine back to the original mesh?"

"Is there a way you could add the proteins synthetically?"

He squinted at her, and asked, "What?"

She shrugged, a little embarrassed. "Well... I don't know!"

"Add proteins? What, like inject them?"

"I know, it's stupid..."

"Martha, if that were possible, genetic engineering would have a whole different face! In fact, it does, in parts of the universe, and I've participated in demonstrations against that sort of thing."

"Okay, so, it was an asinine thing to say. I'm sorry."

He shook his head and stared at the machine again. And she wondered if he really wanted her help at all.

* * *

Ninety-six hours later, he was still struggling, still frowning, cursing and pacing, not to mention periodically launching the sonic screwdriver at the wall in anger.

Another day had passed, and though he had shot it down when Martha had suggested it, he had come back round to the idea of synthetic proteins, and was now trying to work out how to incorporate them with his DNA at all levels. Martha was at a nearby computer doing research on synthetic substances that mimic organic substances. Each time the sonic hit the wall, it startled her, but she got up, retrieved it and put it back in the Doctor's hand with a reassurance that together, they would figure it out.

"Don't let your frustration get the better of you," she advised, trying not to sound condescending.

He muttered something, and she couldn't tell whether it was agreement or dissent, before going back to work.

* * *

And when they hit one hundred and twenty hours, the Doctor went into a full-pelt pace, complete with rant.

"I know the locus, and I know which twelve proteins combine there, and in what proportions - it's child's play! So why can't I nail it down, Martha? Why can't I get this bloody thing - " with that, he kicked the machine, " - to recombine? It's just twelve piddly little proteins - what is the problem? We can recreate them synthetically if we're careful - I mean, it would take us about eight months to do it, but it could be done - but we can't get it to replicate at all levels of my DNA without it causing mutation at other loci. We can extract them organically, but we run into the same problem - protein imbalance, wonky DNA... I'll wind up with a third eye, or my hair will turn green or something. Unless, that is, we take it from somewhere else, like a plant or animal... no, that won't work Doctor! Blimey, you're a dullard sometimes!" He turned to Martha and shouted, "My body would reject it unless it came from the same species, and guess what! _There is no one else who is the same species as me! Aaagh!"_

At this outburst, he had both hands with fistfuls of hair and was pulling hard.

"Okay, you need a break," Martha announced, hopping down off the stool where she had been sitting, doing research on sonic resonance. She marched over and grabbed the Doctor's hand. "Come on, you're done for the day. Possibly for the week."

"What? Why?"

"Because we've been at this together for four days straight, and you've been at it on your own for a lot longer than that, and you're starting to lose it."

"I'm not starting to lose it," he insisted, wriggling his hand free.

"Okay, well, at least you're starting to lose perspective. You're frustrated, understandably. You just need a fresh start. So you're going to take some time off."

She dragged him out the door (not that he fought _that _hard), and shut off the light. She led him to the kitchen and told him to sit down, they were going to have a proper meal for a change. And he watched from the breakfast bar while she proceeded to make the only thing her mother had ever taught her to cook (though her paternal grandmother had taught her numerous other things): French toast and sausages.

When she put the syrup-soaked plate before him, he smiled. "Of all things for your mother to choose to teach you to make, why this?"

"Because, it's the only thing _her _mother taught _her _how to make," Martha answered simply, sitting down beside him at the breakfast bar. "Fortunately, it's exactly the perfect meal to ease frustration."

"It' not frustration," he muttered, swirling his fork listlessly in the syrup.

"Pardon?"

"It's not frustration at the project," he told her. "I mean, yeah, I'm frustrated that it's not going anywhere, but that's not why I'm wound up."

"Oh. I see." She put her fork down and leaned on one elbow. "I can't believe I didn't realise it. I guess I felt that once we identified what was happening, it would stop happening."

"It's okay," he muttered again. "But it's not stopping. I'm feeling... peckish."

"You feel the hunger."

"Yep," he said with almost no sound. "The monster is emerging."

"I guess this gives us a bit more drive to succeed, doesn't it?"

"Yep," he repeated. "And you know how it goes, Martha, it's just going to get worse. And I have no idea how bad it has the potential to get."

"Well, I'm prepared for anything you can throw at me," she said, nodding, staring into her plate. "Fortunately, we're parked in deep space. No ardour to be had out there."

"I'll set the TARDIS not to land anywhere in the next seven days," he told her. "And not to let me override it."

"Good idea."

* * *

The Doctor went back to work on the machine the next day, but nothing much changed, except that his mood deteriorated. Every suggestion made by Martha was a joke to him. Every question she asked was met with an air of _I can't believe you don't know this_. Martha took it all in stride, and mostly shrugged off all of the surliness, all of the belittling stares and comments muttered under his breath. She reckoned it was a bit like an addict going through withdrawal.

Except, the hunger he harboured was a genuine _hunger_, not a _hankering _or even the true essence of a craving. He was in need of real nourishment, something that could actually fulfil and sustain him. Martha began to second-guess the whole thing after day five was over; perhaps some hurt feelings amongst young women on Earth was a small price to pay for the life of a man who had saved humankind more times than anyone (even he) could count. She even wondered, if she changed her mind about how the Doctor's hunger should be handled, would the TARDIS allow _her_ to override the no-landing function the Doctor had set, in order to ensure he did not go out looking for love?

But in their travels together, she had learned that the Doctor didn't really believe in collateral damage, not when he was thinking straight and honestly. Even if Martha agreed to have him reprise his woman-pulling ways, she felt sure he would rebuff the idea (probably not nicely) and insist on continuing cold-turkey.

"So this is the eighth damn day and I have nothing!" the Doctor screamed, pacing once again in his lab. "I haven't even had a solid _idea_ in two days! And you, you're no bloody help."

"No, I suppose I'm not," Martha responded calmly. To be fair, she hadn't really made a viable suggestion or contribution to the machine's advancement since the day when she had dragged the Doctor out of the room for French toast.

On the return-pace, he kicked his suit jacket, which was lying on the floor, into the corner.

"And I'm so_ sick _of the word _locus_. And _protein_! And _synthetic_ and _replicate_ and _DNA _and _profile _and _Lazarus!_"

The last word, the name of the professor whose machine had begun this whole mess, came out of his mouth like a ton of rough bricks, and seemed to spark something.

"LAZARUS!" he screamed, kicking a discarded piece of piping now, again, into the corner. "What a bloody idiot! Just wanted to live longer, as if that's any damn picnic! Thought he was so clever with that stupid machine... turned him into a monster."

He stopped pacing and faced her squarely, though his tone did not abate.

"He was a monster, Martha. He literally _sucked lives_. He took other people's lives so that he could live on himself, and he felt that it was a small price to pay in the name of science! He put himself in a position that guaranteed it was either him or them. They died or he did. So we stopped him, you and I.

"And what's the thanks I get? This mutated DNA which means I'm a monster as well, only I'm a really bloody charming one who has to suck souls instead of lives. I have to have _love_ and _heat_ and _fervour_ and what the hell does any of that mean? Life force, sure, I can see that, but... making up cliché sob stories just for a shag? Ugh!"

He let out a grunt of frustration and kicked again, this time at air, and resumed the pace.

"I'm better than this, Martha," he insisted. "I'm a better man than some guy who walks around lying to women to get them into bed! And I did it for over a month! And I may never know what kind of damage I did. I mean, I know Jana went off the rails... well, she was probably a little off the rails for a start, but that's not the point! The point is... I'm better than _that guy!_ And yet because of fucking Lazarus, I have no choice. I either act like a nightmare barfly, or I slowly waste away. Unless I can torture myself into fixing this machine which attempts to replicate Lazarus, and by the way, WHY CAN'T I WORK OUT HOW TO DO THAT?"

By now, he was panting, baring his teeth, and Martha could see the beads of sweat forming at his temples, threatening to trickle down.

She came to a decision. Friends do things for one another, even if it hurts...

She stood. "Okay, you're overloading. Time for another break. Come on."

She took his hand and once again, led him from the room.


	18. Chapter 18

**I have never had so much fun reading reviews! I don't like saying LOL, but it's what I did when I read your thoughts on the situation! There were a few reviews of the "Woo-hoo" variety, but there was more than one that said Martha was about to "take one for the team." **

**Regarding the situation as it stands now: remember, the Doctor is genuinely not in control of his emotions or actions, despite some brief periods of lucidity. Martha is in love with him, but is, most importantly, his companion. Is she really that saintly for sticking by him, helping him figure out the science of it and taking a few lumps when he gets a bit edgy? If it's not her job to help him get through a hard time, and do it with some patience and sensitivity, then what is? Ask yourself, could you really leave your best friend on his own in this situation?**

**As for what she is about to do in this chapter... okay, perhaps not everyone would do this, knowing how much it could sting the morning after. But Martha, as you will see, is reasonable and sets forward her conditions. And, need we be reminded that she's been _wanting_ this for a long time? Perhaps it's not all just for the Doctor.**

**You're about to read some meaningful sci-fi smut. At least that's the goal. :-) And, there's yet another slight game-changer in this chapter...**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

**18**

"Where are we going?" he asked, like a child.

"Just to watch some television. Take your mind off it."

"TV? That's your solution? Very clever," he snapped.

"It will help. We'll put on one of the _Star Wars_ prequels. I've watched _Star Wars_ with you before, I know what happens. You'll get so wrapped up in the technical inaccuracies, you won't even notice the anger or the hunger, or any of it."

"I'm telling you, a light sabre could never refract light so as to be perceived as purple, it's absurd."

"See?" she asked.

"Wait, shouldn't we just go to the media room?" he asked, noticing that she had taken a turn, heading to her room.

"I borrowed the DVDs a few weeks ago when you were off on one of your little adventures, so they're in my room now."

He muttered some irritation and followed her, and waited by the doorway as she drifted over to the television and seemed to be searching for something. She said, "Why are you standing there?"

"I'm waiting for you to find the DVD."

"It's right here, I'm just putting it in now."

"We're watching it here?"

"Sure. Why not? We're already here."

He muttered "All right," simply with a tone, without using any words. He sat down on the foot of the bed, and she turned on the television and fiddled with the equipment a bit.

As he watched her prepare the movie, he grew agitated. "Martha, this is stupid, I'm going back to the lab."

"Shh, shh," she urged, still trying to get the picture right. "Just relax. Lie down."

"What?"

"Relax. It's why you're here."

"Martha..."

"Doctor, just do it. Trust me. You know you need to decompress. Ranting at me is not fixing the machine."

"I know, but..."

"You said you wanted my help. Are you going to listen to me, or are you just going to fight me like you always have?"

He sighed in a way that let her know in no uncertain terms that he was annoyed. But he kicked off his shoes and moved back until he was in a position to lie down with his head on a pillow.

Martha finally seemed to get what she wanted from the television, and said, "Ah, _voilà._ Perfect."

The Doctor saw nothing on the screen except some palm trees against a purple sunset, and the sound of waves.

"Perfect? What the hell is that?"

"Shhh," she lulled. She went over to the switch and dimmed the lights.

She approached the bed, kicked her own shoes off and climbed onto the mattress, on her knees.

"What happened to _Star Wars_?" he asked, looking up at her.

"The DVD's are in the media room."

"I thought you said..."

"I lied," she shrugged.

His eyebrows went up. "Pardon?"

"Doctor, you called yourself a monster, said you were choiceless. You could go out and do some more damage with that handsome face of yours, but in the end, it's all very hollow."

"Well, yeah, you're right about that bit," he muttered.

"And we've been ignoring the elephant in the room."

He cocked his head to the side and looked her over. He hadn't looked at her that way since the first night in Amsterdam, and she had wondered what he'd been thinking. Now she knew.

"Are you the elephant?" he asked, after a moment of contemplation.

"I am."

"I haven't been ignoring you. I've been trying not to hurt you. It's why I ended up turning outward, remember?"

"Well, Doctor, the time has come to hurt me."

"I can't..."

She lurched forward and threw one leg over him and straddled him across the hips. She pressed her hands into his shoulders and leaned down, smashing her lips against his. She let out a little moan as the sensations washed over her, the feel of his body, his mouth, his surprise. She pushed her tongue against his lips, and he let it in gladly. They spent a few moments in this dance, until Martha abruptly pulled away and sat up.

"Don't you know what I could give you, without your even having to _work_ for it?" she asked.

He stared back at her with a wide-eyed expression of utter shock. "I'm starting to understand," he replied, breathless.

* * *

He didn't reckon she could have anticipated that her brand of ardour for him was so much more distilled than the others, that one kiss would render him half-drunk, but he did reckon she knew she could give him what he needed, without the preliminaries.

In fact, her effect on him in one ten-second kiss was like nothing he had ever thought possible. It was the fullest manifestation of his abstract nature, yet palpable. Swift heat spread through him, followed by a sweet, deeply-penetrating intoxication. His head swam as she pressed him down and kissed him; it was a high, a buzz, a feeling of release and abandon, freedom, absence of fear or inhibition.

Martha had asked, "Don't you know what I could give you, without your even having to _work _for it?"

"I'm starting to understand," he replied, in shock.

"Then tell me one good reason why you shouldn't let me."

Though his conscience was seeing tomorrow in shades of his own self-loathing, he couldn't find anything sensible to say to her.

"See?" she asked, seeing the blank look in his eye.

"It's not fair to you," he whispered.

"What's the alternative? Let you starve? Go slowly insane and waste away?" she asked. "Would you let that happen to _me_, Doctor, if you could stop it?"

"No."

"You'd help me, even if it meant it might hurt you?"

"Of course."

"Then, what's the problem?" she asked with a soft smile.

The truth was, he was in this, he was on fire as she had seen to it, he _wanted _to give in. He found that he actually _wanted _her.

And really, he wasn't _that _surprised about it.

But, he did try to give it one weak stab, before surrendering. It was not a nice (nor truthful) thing to say, but in the fog, he felt it might save their friendship in the long-run. "What if I'm just not excited by you?"

She smiled indulgently. "I'm straddling your hips, Doctor," she said softly. "You can't hide it from me."

She loosened the top two buttons of his shirt, and pulled at his tie. She never broke eye contact, and she gave him a little smile with love and promise within. Even _this _caused a faint drunken tide to come over him. He wondered if Martha's mere presence in his life over the past six weeks had been keeping him more grounded than he might otherwise have been. Was her love in the air all the time? Without it, would he have been out even _more _often, shagging anything that moved, just for a fix? Or would he have turned into a _literal _monster, like Lazarus, rather than being just a giant prat?

"First, we have to establish some ground rules," she said, carefully unknotting the strip of blue and brown silk at his throat.

"Yeah?" he asked, his voice straining with surprise and desire.

"One," she said softly. "We need to acknowledge that my feelings for you are _real_, and that yours for me are if anything, platonic."

He frowned. "Okay."

"For me, what we're about to do is not just a means to an end. I've wanted this for a long time, and just being in the same room with you is emotional for me, let alone... Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"I don't want us to live a lie. Just be careful with me. Be mindful of who I am and what's in my heart. I know the score, Doctor, but I can still get crushed if you misstep."

"Okay."

"Two," she continued, beginning to slowly unbutton his shirt. "I'm not going to ask that you make any kind of commitment to me, but I will not share you. I'm not going to do this with you if you're going to be stepping out with the ladies all over planet Earth. And so, if you feel the need to, you know, leave the farm to get milk, just let me know, and we will end this."

"Okay," he gulped. "That's reasonable." And it _was_ reasonable, though he felt a little insulted by it. He wasn't sure why.

"I can't say for certain that there wouldn't be any hard feelings, but since I'm not able to lay claim on you emotionally, then I think it's the best we can do. Just be honest with me - eventually I'll get over it."

"Fair enough," he breathed, nodding.

"Three," she said, spreading open his shirt and leaning down to plant an intoxicating kiss on his collar bone. "For as long as this lasts, you can have me whenever you need me or want me. But I get the same conditions."

"Okay," he agreed, whispering, barely able to concentrate, for the overwhelming abundance of _ardour_ coming off her.

She gave him another kiss on the collar bone, and then just below, and then again. She dipped her tongue into the divot between the two bones and licked all the way up to his Adam's apple.

He gritted his teeth and uttered a curse, saying her name with an intensity she had never heard before. She was surprised at this, how violently he was reacting to just some soft kisses, a little licking... and she hadn't even really got started yet. Surely a man of his experience (especially lately) should be more jaded about this sort of thing.

But she continued down his chest with little moans and slow, sweet, wet kisses. When she reached his waistband, she unsnapped his trousers with her teeth, and stood up to pull them off. She also took the opportunity to remove his socks and pants.

"How do you feel?" she asked, tugging at her own tee-shirt, pulling it over her head.

He watched her with eyes glazed-over, and replied, "Like someone tossed me into a vat of mead."

She smirked, unbuttoning her linen trousers and letting them drop. "Inebriated by something sweet."

"Oh, yes," he responded in a whisper.

She stepped out of her knickers and kicked them aside. "It's a good thing, I should think. Wouldn't want you too lucid."

She reprised her place upon him, though took a moment to grasp and stroke him a bit. This caused him to nearly hit the ceiling. Again, she was intending to give him pleasure, but she had _never _seen a man react quite this way before, in being touched by her. Nevertheless, she relished in the feel of the hardness in her hands, and the unbelievable moaning coming over his lips.

At long last, she positioned herself exactly right, rose up, and when she came back down, it was with him inside. Of course, he moaned loudly, but so did she. Tingles spread like little fireworks all over her body, and she rose up again, then came back down. She repeated the action several times before falling forward once more, planting her hands in his shoulders. He opened his eyes, and she was surprised to see them flooded, and noticed tears had fallen over the sides.

"Are you all right?" she asked, moving steadily on him.

The sound that came out was half-moan, half-laugh. "I'm beyond all right," he managed.

He tried hard to continue to keep his eyes open, to continue experiencing this inexplicable moment, this undiluted _love_, this incredible coup to which the word _intense _could not do justice. He wanted to continue experiencing her, Martha Jones, whom he had not fully understood until now.

She held his eyes as well, though for her, it was not difficult. She couldn't help herself drinking in those dark pools of mystery, that she felt never, _ever_, until today, revealed anything to her. For the first time now, she finally had him in her grasp, well and truly, if only temporarily. She felt the locking of those eyes, the fact that they were pulling her in, that he was swimming in her.

She leaned down and buried her mouth in his neck, nipping with her lips, tongue and teeth, still moving, never stopping. And she whispered, "Can you even begin to understand how much I love you?"

He moaned, her name once again, and sank even further into the heady intoxication.

"This past month has been hellish," she whispered. "And why do you think I stay with you?"

"I know..." he tried, head swimming.

She positioned herself once more to make eye contact and make him watch her move. "It's because of these eyes," she told him, running her fingers gently over his eyes and up onto his forehead. She buried her fingers in the unruly dark hair, and pulled, just for a moment. "I can't let go of them."

He listened and watched, helplessly awash in pure sensation, floating, a complete high.

Her fingers made their way down his face. "And these lips," she said, touching them. "I feel a warm chill when I think of them, that they have kissed mine."

She ran her fingers down over his chin, neck and chest.

"It's because you make me feel alive, and my heart pounds when you touch me. You make me feel womanly, and child-like, and oh-so-human..." she paused as her breathing quickened all of a sudden. She sat up straight and leaned back and never stopped moving, never stopped driving them both toward the peak of their pleasure. Her words came out in spurts now, like those of someone in the throes of something bigger than she, someone whose energies were occupied somewhere other than in her brain. "You make me see everything differently. You make me question everything. You make me feel brave and free. You make me..."

She took another pause. "You make me weak in the knees. You make me feel desire like I've never... " Her body was on the rise, a storm was gathering inside of her, between them, all around them. Release was on its way. "You make me feel desire and longing and urgency... and you're about to make me..."

A sea of drunken passion flowed over him. She was _there_ - just there - which reminded him that he was practically incapacitated by her at this stage, and she hadn't even truly reached the apex of her ardour yet.

"... you're about to make me..."

"If you do," he interrupted with a crackling voice, straining. "I'll pass out!"

"Well, then, sweet dreams," she told him, just before her body shook like a leaf, and she let out a cry. He didn't have time to feel the best bits, her insides pulling at him and then releasing, her fingernails in his upper arms, before his vision blurred and the world went black for a few seconds. He struggled to stay conscious, but the jolt was too much - it was like being shot in the arm with adrenaline. The overall effect was full and intoxicating and made him feel like a god, though the initial shock was overwhelming.

When the black dots retreated from his vision and his hearing returned, she was coming down from her high, shuddering, recovering. She fell forward once again, this time in exhaustion, and covered his neck with kisses. As the fire in her abated, so did the intense, blinding, swirling world within him. _Her_ heat and _her _pleasure and love and fervour fed him what he needed for survival and nearly knocked him unconscious; but now, everything about her was putting his body on-edge as well, in the form of good, old-fashioned lust. And as lucidity returned, what he wanted was to sate a different, much more primal and describable hunger.

He turned her onto her back, and when he did, a renewed ardour came off from Martha, but not as strong as before. It was just enough to spur him on, to drive into her, rattling the headboard until he had nothing left. But, though he felt the healthy, normal, much-needed release, at the very end, she cried out again in climax, and he found his senses flooded with a certain kind of delirium.

And when he lay down beside her, the ceiling spun. When he heard her drift off to sleep, he was flying, almost literally watching himself, and her, from above.

He couldn't believe the effect she had had on him. He couldn't believe how competely her ardour had sated his hunger, and then some.

He couldn't believe how much she must love him.

It was incredible, intoxicating. He felt indulgent and childish just thinking about the ecstasy of it.

It was like a drug.


	19. Chapter 19

**Annnnnnd... thus begins a 2-3 chapter period of loving, angst and mind-changing. Be prepared for dealing with a bunch of relationship crap that we all wish we could ignore.**

**I promise, the Doctor will have his regeneration ability back soon enough!**

**Enjoy.**

* * *

**19**

Martha had always hated the feeling of waking up alone after spending a spectacular night with someone, so she didn't want to be rude. But after she'd been awake for three hours and the Doctor had shown no sign of movement, and was not responding to gentle shakes, she got tired of waiting and went to the kitchen for coffee and toast, then went to the media room. The objective was to catch up on the election, but she'd wound up watching a mindless reality programme, and enjoying it more than she'd like to admit.

At last, a Time Lord darkened the doorway, and he looked absolutely flattened.

"Hi," he moaned, leaning against the jamb, rubbing his eye.

"Hi," she replied, muting the television. "You look knackered."

"Yeah."

Martha felt, once again, insecure. Had she not been enough to sate the hunger? Was it because he didn't have feelings for her? As she understood it, all that mattered were _her _feelings for _him - _so what was the problem now?

"Doctor, er, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you supposed to be in much better shape this morning? I mean, I've seen you a time or two after..." she stopped short. She couldn't commit it to words, she didn't know why. "And usually you're in such high spirits, it's actually irritating."

"Bit of a hangover." He trudged forward and sat down beside her on the sofa.

"A hangover? Were you drinking last night, somehow?"

He opened his mouth to answer, and found that he couldn't. At last, he sighed, and just shook his head.

"Well, do you feel  
up to going back to the lab?" she asked. "Do you feel rejuvenated, even in the least?" She was paranoid, but actually anxious to get back to work. In spite of last night and how much she had relished it with every fibre of her being, a part of her was ready to close it off as a beautiful memory, and get back to the way things were. Life was less ambiguous that way, less ultimately disappointing.

"You know what I'd like to do? I'd like to take a break from that lab, Martha," he told her. "I'd like to strike out at the stars and planets, the way it's supposed to be."

"Okay," she agreed with a smile. "I guess I could use a good bit of old-fashioned interstellar chaos."

* * *

But he did not give her chaos. His "hangover" had dissipated quickly enough, and he had become acclimated to the after-effects of an entanglement with _her_. It was an afterglow to which none of the previous could compare - even Martha could see this, after an hour or two watching him quite closely.

The two of them stood at the foot of a high precipice, facing a sea whose waves crashed against the rocks around them and on the sparkling sand beneath their feet. It was an oval-shaped patch of beach not even as large as the TARDIS' console room, and there wasn't a soul in sight. The sea's mineral air caused glowing blue flowers to coat the cliff face and the boulders behind them and the TARDIS, and its waters swirled in hues of deep pink and purple. She enjoyed the view, but commented, "I see we're on one of your good-mood jaunts," rather detachedly. She was trying to put out of her mind the fact that _she_, this time, was the one who had put him in the good mood.

He smiled subtly and looked at her. She was squinting against the crystal-clear sun, and he took the opportunity to admire her. She was spectacular, really. Her skin practically glowed golden in almost any light, and her hair, understated but invitingly smooth like obsidian, blew back from her face in the breeze. Her mouth was exquisite; perfectly pink, perfectly Nubian, and soft. And the rest of her... lithe and petite and efficient, but curvy, enticing. She was well-designed by whatever higher-power had had the good sense to bring her into the universe, but, he could see, her body was not created just for maximum proficiency in a life-threatening crisis. Everything about her spoke to a flawless combination of brains and sex.

He had understood this truth before, but until last night, it had been only theoretical.

Because he'd known she was brilliant and gorgeous, but until she had unleashed her near-crippling fervour upon him, he had had no _real_ idea of how she actually felt. Sure, he'd known that she had a crush, or was smitten, or infatuated, or whatever. But how she had been able to reach in and nearly turn him inside-out with desire and intoxication and...

"Martha, how can you love me as much as you do?"

Her head snapped in his direction. "What?"

He hadn't meant for the question to come tumbling out quite so ungracefully, if at all. But now the door was open, he pressed forward. "Seriously."

"Sometimes I wonder," she mused, turning back toward the sea. "But I do. I can't change that, hard as I try."

"I mean, I understand love," he told her. "I've seen love before. But you... I've never..."

"Doctor, what are you doing?" she asked, just short of snapping at him

"I'm just... fascinated. That's all."

"What's so fascinating?" she wanted to know. "You're dashing and scary clever, and you have a spaceship that can go literally anywhere. I know I'm not the first to feel this way about you. I'm not even the first _this year_, and that's not even counting Jana and the gang."

"No, it's..."

He trailed off and just stared at her, millions of thoughts running through his mind. Thoughts of her, thoughts of the nature of love and the universe, beauty, lust, time...

Eventually, she realised she was being watched. "What?"

He took two steps forward and kissed her before he could change his mind. He took her by the shoulders and squeezed with all of the emotion he felt. How _could_ anyone love him this much? How could _she_, with all of her potential, all that she knew and could do, all the good inside of her, love _him, _with all of the rubbish in his life, all of the ugliness he had seen and perpetuated and caused? It was miraculous.

The kiss lasted only a few seconds, and when he pulled away from her, she seemed startled.

"What was that?" she asked, a little dazed.

"That was a kiss," he told her. "And it was a good one, if I do say so myself."

"Well, that part I know," she agreed, rolling her eyes. "I suppose I should ask _why_."

He paused. He wasn't sure how to answer.

"You know those conditions you gave me?" he asked. "All those acknowledgements we're supposed to make, and the no-sharing policy?"

"Yeah, what about them?"

"Do all of them still apply?"

"Of course."

"Are you sure? All of them?"

"Yes, Doctor, what are you getting at?"

"I feel amazing, Martha," he told her, smiling widely. "Fantastic! Like, better than I've felt in a century."

"I'm very glad to hear that."

"And I don't want to let go... don't want to..."

He kissed her again, only harder this time, and slid his fingers down her back, pulling her close. Their tongues met, much to her surprise, and danced together for a bit, lighting both parties on fire. But a sigh from Martha gave the Doctor a drunken jolt.

He pulled back again, and leaned into her neck. He kissed behind her ear and whispered, "If all rules apply..."

"...and you want or need me now..." she replied. "But it's only been half a day."

"The game has changed a bit, Martha."

"I wasn't aware it was a game," she sighed, turning to mush as his tongue dragged across her jugular.

"I suppose it isn't, anymore."

* * *

And somehow, they found themselves naked in the glistening sand on a private beach, on a planet whose name Martha wasn't even sure he'd bothered to mention. Not twelve hours after their first, urgent encounter, they made utterly unnecessary love while listening to the waves. She cried out at the sky, he spoke and clung to the ground.

Such a mixture of emotion coursed through her now. Last night, she had told him he could have her anytime he wanted or needed her, and that she encouraged him to have her when he wanted, but didn't necessarily need, her. This morning, she had been pretty well convinced it would never happen again, and that she'd very much like to relegate the memory to memory. Now, she was all abuzz with pleasure once more, and was, in one sense, delighted that he seemed to want without needing her, but in another sense, she wondered _why_. He had never shown her any carnal interest before, and their previous bout of lovemaking had been a means to an end for him, so what was causing today's sudden fever? Was she _that good_?

Well, perhaps, but somehow she had the feeling that the Doctor's motivations ran deeper than just great sex.

Afterwards, he asked if she'd like to go for a hike. He knew of a place where they could observe one of the glowing blue cliff-faces from above and across a crescent-shaped inlet, so she agreed. They scrambled over rocks and tree roots, and when possible, walked hand-in-hand up paths, until they reached their destination. They spent no more than twenty minutes actually taking in the view, before the Doctor realised that the sun would be going down in a few hours, and this planet had no moon to light the way, and nothing resembling civilisation for a thousand miles from where they were. So they hiked back down, and even did the last mile and a half in pitch dark.

When they returned to the TARDIS, not only were they sprinkled from head to toe in shimmery sand from the beach, but they had also been accosted by Dewy Sweet Trees whose sap dripped like water but behaved like molasses when in contact with solids. Martha had a few cuts along her calves from upturned branches and the like, and the Doctor had, at one point, lost his footing, and fallen shoulder-first into a wall of vines and their yellow Hayezzen flowers and their incredibly prolific pollen. And so, they rinsed off together, and reprised their superfluous, but staggering, coupling against the tile wall of the shower in the Doctor's room.

Martha couldn't help but overthink, but as they'd thrown off their clothes and stumbled under the hot water, she resolved to live in the moment, at least for the time being. And _the moment_ had led to great swathes of greedy pleasure for her, and of course, total gluttonous abandon for him.

And at last, with no ceremony, they stumbled from the shower to the bed and continued on, finishing up in amazement and utter exhaustion.

He had been high all day long, and wasn't sure if he'd be able to let go, ever.


	20. Chapter 20

**Again, I had so much fun reading the reviews and exchanging PM's on chapter 19! Everything from well-worded commentary on love and commitment to thoughts on the seldom-mentioned in fiction, uglier, mundane consequences of sex (i.e. soreness and the "wet spot"). You guys are fabulous, honestly!**

**So, as I said before, there comes now a period of relationship angst. I am currently in the process of trying to revise, and we'll see where it goes... hopefully not to a place of meandering fanfic second-guesses and no plot...**

**Bear with us (me, the Doctor and Martha), and enjoy!**

* * *

**20**

They lay in the dim silence for a few minutes.

"Doctor?"

"Mm?"

"What the hell is going on?"

He groaned. "I was afraid you were going to ask that."

"Oh, good," she said, surprised. "I was sure you were going to pretend not to know what I'm talking about. This will save us some time."

He groaned again and turned on his side to face her. "No, I know what you're talking about. Can't we just enjoy it without analyzing it?"

"Really? After all this, you're going to be evasive? Now?" She turned to face him now as well. "Does getting laid a lot give you vinegar in your veins and a hell of a lot of nerve?"

"Well, yeah. Has that effect on most of us," he shrugged, then fixed his face and paused. "You really want to know?"

"Oh, I think so."

"I am on a high," he told her. "A physical high. At least I think it's physical... physiological."

"Excuse me?"

"Something about you drives me literally out of my mind," he muttered, not able to look her in the eye. "I asked you how you could love me this much, and told you that I understood love itself, but not this depth, this intensity, this..." He pulled one hand down over his face and shuddered a little. "Martha, _this_, I do not understand."

"Okay. Keep talking, I'll catch up."

"I was seducing women who were starting to have some vested interest in me, in order to feed a hunger. They liked me a lot, were feeling fuzzy and starry-eyed about me. We'd go to bed, do our thing, and I'd feel whole again - fulfilled, sated, whatever you want to call it."

She nodded, to encourage him to continue.

"But with you..." he sighed. "You kissed me once, and my head spun. I felt a buzz, like being drunk. You whispered to me, kissed me all over..." He stopped and gave another little shiver, his mind and soul going back to those first moments together, only one night before.

"Yeah, go on. What happened?"

He shook his head in disbelief. "I just fell deeper, got drunker. And when we finally got to... when I finally was inside you... well, then I was completely stoned. Absolutely gone."

"Gone?" she asked, a little horrified.

"No, not _gone_, as in, departed. I was still very much _there, _in the moment! Don't think I wasn't feeling every little movement, everything you gave. I just mean, my mind had scattered. Haven't you ever been stoned?"

"Not really."

"My body was... I don't know, turning to vapour, or something. And when you spoke to me, told me you loved me, the effect I have on you..." he gulped, again, remembering. "I went paralytic. Helpless. Like I'd been slipped some drug that made everything blurs and bliss."

"Wow."

"And I told you that if you came, I'd pass out, and I wasn't lying. For a few seconds, I actually blacked out."

She smiled. "Really?"

"Yep. I need ardour. What's more loaded with ardour than that? A big, solid climax with..."

"...you. With someone I love."

He nodded.

"What about the other times? This morning and tonight? There was a lot of _ardour_ there, Doctor. Did you black out twice on the beach, once in the shower, and twice more here in the bed?"

He smiled now too. "No. Just the one time. But the effect is still... _staggering_. When you come, Martha... you practically drown me. And it's bloody spectacular."

"What about the hunger? The DNA thing?"

"It isn't just the hunger sated, like food, like what the others gave me. It's a highly distilled, stronger form of that same food. Richer. Plus... it's more than that, even... it feels like _that_, plus a big ladle full of LSD," he told her. He reached out and took her jaw in his palm and stroked her cheek with his thumb. "Oh, you. You, my dear, are a highly addictive substance."

"Because I love you."

"Because you love me, apparently _a whole lot_."

"I reckon, Doctor," she began, her eyes drooping lovingly, her hand on his arm. "That it's not just about _a lot._ It's about _you_. It's because I love the real you, not some version of you that you made up in a bar, to get me interested. Not John Smith the insurance salesman, not some lonely guy from Kent with a horrid ex-wife. I love a Time Lord. I love a man with two hearts, who is nearly a thousand years old and fights Daleks! I love a homeless man with a highly suspect sense of humour, and who seems, in spite of my best efforts, to still be in love with a former companion, who is, correct me if I'm wrong, _trapped in a parallel universe_."

"Martha..."

"Yeah! I know! It's so infuriating, but that grand old Rose tragedy is a part of who you are, and I love every part of you! And if you don't think _that's_ confusing and hurtful, or that it doesn't make me think I need therapy..."

"Martha..."

"And it didn't change anything when you were turning into a monster at intervals and treating me like a stowaway. It didn't change when I thought you were acting like a gigolo just for the hell of it, and ignoring me because I didn't interest you. All of that... and I still loved you. By most accounts, I would say, there is nothing that could make me not love you, if the past six weeks didn't put me off. Now, how many random women in Amsterdam, Prague, New York, or any parallel universe, could say that?"

He smiled. "None that I can think of."

"That's right," she said authoritatively. And then suddenly, her face fell. "But it doesn't solve the problem, Doctor. You are still vulnerable to a bunch of diseases that your system isn't equipped to handle, you still won't regenerate if you die from one of them, or get shot by a jealous fling."

"You're right about that."

"And you still have this weird craving that could, if you ever let it lapse, kill you. And, you are still stalled-out on how to fix it."

"I know," he agreed. "And now there's a new problem."

"What's the new problem?"

"I have discovered... _you_. And I don't want to stop."

"No, you've discovered a drug, and you're addicted."

He conceded, "Okay. If you like."

"Great," she sighed. She contemplated for a minute. Then, "It seems to me, the more we do this, the more I learn about you, the deeper into you I go..."

"...the more potent the high will be for me," he finished, dreamily.

"And the harder it will be for you to stop," she continued. "The harder it will be for both of us. I mean, Doctor, I started out in love with you. Right now, I don't have a word for how I feel. I can't imagine how crippled I'll be if we continue to shag three times a day for the foreseeable future. Or how annihilated I'll be when it's over."

"So," he said. "What, then? First thing in the morning, we go back to the lab?"

"Yeah."

"I'll use my considerable, and now relatively stable, mental acuity to work out how to target a..." he trailed off, staring at the wall with surprise.

"What? What's wrong?"

He stared at her now, eyes wide. "I think I've been all wrong-headed about this."

"How so?"

"I've been ruminating over how to target a specific locus and recombine the proteins! It's just a bit of biochemistry, not like it's rocket science, right? I've been wondering if I could reverse the function of a mass spectrometer to _track down_ the protein cocktails rather than to interpret input like it normally does."

"Well, that's an inspired bit of resourcefulness! Seems to me you could use it also to recombine if you had to."

"Yeah, but I'm thinking..." he said, sitting up, now biting the corner of his lower lip. "...that's not the point." He was being mysterious.

"Okay, but, how would you do that with every cell in your body?" she asked. "That's the only way to change your actual DNA."

He climbed out of bed, pulled on his pants and trousers, and explained calmly, though detachedly, "I reckoned that if I could fix a few hundred cells by hand and get some regeneration mojo up and running in just those few, say, in a petri dish, then I could use it, channel it to all other cells. It would be renewing energy that courses through and changes every cell, and practically replicates itself as it goes - that's what regeneration is. Except, I would be able to control it."

"Well, great," she said, sitting up.

He turned and faced her, and again, looked her over. "It could have worked, yes, but it would have taken six months. And... I was missing the point."

"What point?"

"I've been going about it all wrong from the very beginning. Looking at the dilemma from the wrong point of view."

"What are you talking about?" she wanted to know.

"I can't say yet," he told her, picking up his shirt suddenly, and pulling it on. "I don't want to talk about it until I'm sure."

"Why not?"

"Just trust me. Please."

"I want to help you!" she told him, rolling to her side of the bed.

"You are helping me, Martha," he told her. He came to her side and put his hand gently on her shoulder to hold keep her from standing up. "More than you realise, I think."

"Doctor, what are you on about?"

"Just give me until morning, okay? Have a good night's sleep."

She sighed, then clicked her tongue. "You're a frustrating man."

He smiled. "Call it a hobby. Just get some rest. That's how you can help."

She stared at him with scepticism. "Really?"

"Absolutely."

She clicked her tongue again, and laid down. "Fine. But only because I'm really, _really_ tired, and don't think I'd be any good to you right now."

"Good," he muttered. He dashed back round the bed and grabbed his shoes. Just before stepping out of the room, killing the lights and closing the door, he said, "I'll talk to you in a few hours, okay?"

* * *

When "a few hours" were up, Martha woke, showered, went down the hall to her own room to get dressed, and then found her way to the Doctor's previously secret lab. He was sitting at one of the counters on a chrome stool, soundly asleep with his head resting against a miniature cooling chamber.

His left index finger was bandaged and in front of him sat a high-powered microscope. She spied several blood samples pressed between fibreglass slides, of various degrees of freshness, lying about. It seemed to her that the freshest one had been pressed into the microscopic port of the computer. He must have pricked his finger to take a new sample, just a bit ago, before falling asleep.

She woke him carefully, so as not to startle him off the stool. She asked questions, but much to her frustration (though not much to her surprise) he still would not discuss what he had found. He would say that he thought he had found a cure, but would not confirm anything, nor give any hints. Once again, he asked for a bit more time, and used the word "latitude."

"I need to do a couple more experiments before I'll feel comfortable discussing my findings."

"Fine," she said, flatly, moving to leave the room.

"It's a scientist's prerogative."

"Yep, it is," she replied, equally flatly.


	21. Chapter 21

**My friends, I think there are only one or two chapters left after this! I like to warn folks when things start to wind down, just in case you can't feel it...**

* * *

**21**

Martha stayed out of the lab that day, upon the Doctor's request.

She was frustrated by this, and disappointed, plus, she was exhausted from the last two days'/nights' activities. But, she had been the one to invoke the pact that he could have her whenever he felt like it. And frankly, she wasn't hating it - the sex, or the attention. So, after dinner, dishes were left on the table, and clothes were left in a trail between the bedroom door and the foot of the bed. The footboard was used creatively before either one of them ever touched the beadspread or mattress. Though they did use the mattress plenty, and each other's pliability and willingness.

And at a key moment toward the end of this particular adventure, the Doctor let something slip though his lips. Martha heard it, but in that precise moment, she was in no shape to address it. She simply let herself wind up and release, and then, like a scab over raw emotions, her mind began to pick at it.

* * *

"You're just... Martha, you're amazing." Once again, they lay side-by-side, in a daze.

Actually, the Doctor was in a daze. Martha was completely, disastrously lucid.

She didn't respond to his comment. Not even with a sigh or a smile or an exhale.

"Something bothering you?" he asked.

"Damn it, Doctor," she spat, sitting up, climbing abruptly out of bed. She crossed the room in a hurry, gathering up her clothes.

He sat up now too. "What? What's wrong?"

She pulled on her pants and bra as though they were the last fur coats left in the Arctic. "Do you even _know_ what you said?" she asked. "Or were you too far gone?"

"What I said?"

"Yes, what you said!" she exclaimed, pulling her tee-shirt over her head. "Toward the end, when you were..."

His eyes went huge with surprise and dread. "Oh God, what did I say?"

She planted her hands, still grasping her jeans, firmly on her hips, and stared at him in utter, unadulterated exasperation. She couldn't work out whether he was being remarkably obtuse, or if she, in the throes of ecstasy, really had been enough to render the universe's strongest mind not unconscious, but unaware of what was coming out of his own mouth.

"What?" he asked again, his voice rising in pitch. "Was it _that_ filthy?"

"No! It's not that!"

"Well, it couldn't have been someone else's name!" he protested. "Could it?"

"No!"

"Then, what?"

She let out another frustrated exhale, and turned her back. "You know what? If you don't know, maybe it's best to just leave it alone."

"No, it's not best. Tell me."

She turned ninety degrees, so she was looking at him sideways. She crossed her arms over her chest, jeans draped over one of her forearms. "You said you love me."

"Oh," the Doctor said, retreating immediately from his on-alert, bolt-upright position in bed. "That."

"Yeah! That!"

"I hadn't meant for that to slip out."

"You hadn't meant for it to _slip out?_" Martha shouted.

"Not this soon."

"Doctor! It shouldn't be... it's not even... oh, my God, Doctor, I can't even tell you..." She had dropped her jeans on the floor and her arms were pulling at the air, as if she were looking for leverage.

"Why is it making you so upset?" he asked.

"Because!" she squeaked. "It's a violation of our pact!"

"It is?"

"Yes! You agreed that we needed to acknoledge that I have _these feelings_ for you, but you feel platonic toward me. I said I didn't want us to live a lie, and you said you were okay with that!"

"I _am_ okay with that. I don't want to live a lie."

"But you don't love me! Don't be daft!"

"I don't?"

"No! You're addicted. You're addicted to the sex, the intoxication and possibly even to the idea of where it all comes from, that power you have over me."

"Well now, that's just insulting," he muttered, pouting.

"Doctor, can't you see what's happening?"

"Yes! I can!" he growled, rolling to the side of the bed and, as she had, standing up abruptly. He found his pants nearby and stepped into them before continuing. "I know how this goes, Martha. I fix myself, my DNA, and the hunger stops. The drunken effect you have on me will cease to be. And even though I know that, I think of being with you, _without_ the drug, and I still want it! I still want to be with you."

"You can't know that, Doctor," she pleaded. "You have never _been with me _without it putting you into a stupor. That's like saying, I'd still want to smoke the cigarette even if the nicotine wasn't there! What the hell kind of sense does that make? What would be the point?"

"Seriously? That's your comparison?"

"The point is, no-one knows what the benefit of smoking a cigarette without the nicotine could be, because the nicotine is so addictive! It overpowers the experience and makes the smoker a slave."

"That's ridiculous."

"Exactly."

He paused and stared at her for a few moments. He was eerily still. "You're convinced you're right?"

She sighed. "Doctor, I'm really sorry, but you're not totally capable of thinking clearly right now."

"I'm not?"

"This is a role-play to you," she continued. "It's almost like we're playing house, only it's the X-rated version. We have this 'relationship' that's mutually satisfying. The satisfaction it gives me gives _you_ satisfaction. Only we're not addressing the fact that this whole thing is totally lopsided, so instead of talking about it, you're overcompensating!"

"You seem to have it all sorted." Although he felt that her argument was quite flimsy. He wasn't sure why she needed an argument in the first place.

"Doctor, I have lived with you for months now. I love you and I _know _you. I know where your heart lies, it and it's not with me."

"All right, then," he conceded. He sat down on the edge of the bed. "Where do we go from here?"

"I think we're done," she told him.

"Done? Completely?"

"Well, I'll still travel with you and be your friend, but no more sex."

"That won't work."

"Why not?"

"Because, there is _no way_ we can go back to being friends now. Not after _all this. _And... oh, Martha, this is the worst timing ever."

"I don't know what you mean by that. But this... it's too hard, Doctor. It hurts too much."

"So, let me get this straight," he said flatly, staring at the floor between his feet. "You fall in love with me, and spend months wishing I would notice, so we could give it a go. When I do notice, and we do give it a go, I fall in love with you... and _that_ is what hurts too much?"

"It's not that simple, because it's not just us, _giving it a go_. There are factors that colour the whole damn thing, and you cannot trust your feelings right now, Doctor. And as long as you don't know where you stand, it is too painful to be that close to you. Every fibre of my being wants to cling, and if I'm constantly wondering if I'll have to dislodge myself soon... it's too much. Too much."

"I do know where I stand."

"I'm afraid you don't, love."

"I'm not an idiot, Martha."

"No, but you might be an _emotional_ idiot at the moment. That's totally different, and totally not your fault. It might even by partly _my_ fault. But, it's fixable."

He responded bitterly, "Well, since you seem to know and feel exactly what's in my mind and in my hearts, then you must also have a solution. What do you propose?"

"Go back to Earth. Meet someone."

"More of that, eh?"

"Well, not necessarily. I think, ideally, you'd find someone you could stay with for a while."

"What, like a girlfriend? Nice and stable, and all that?" he asked her, his face crinkled with distaste.

"Yes," she told him. "Level-headed women who just want someone to share a few laughs with for a little while - they're out there."

"And how do you fit in, as you see it?"

"I'm your companion. I'll help you troubleshoot, like I always do."

"Do we continue to travel?"

She thought about it for a moment, and answered, "Well, I would think that we'd have to remain stationary for a bit, so you can maintain a relationship."

"I see. And what would happen if I should decide I want to keep this person around for longer than that?"

"Maybe we should take it as a sign that our time together has run its course."

"Again, you seem to have this all sorted."

"I'm improvising, obviously. I'm just thinking about keeping you happy without crushing anyone, including me."

"What about me? Do you care if I get crushed?" he asked, meekly.

"Of course."

"Well, this conversation is pretty heavy."

"I'm sorry, Doctor," she said, tears spilling over her cheeks. She wiped at the tears as she bent to put on her jeans, and then pick up her shoes. "I'm sorry."

Then she exited the room without looking back. A few moments later, the Doctor heard dishes clanging together down the hall, as she began to clean up their delicious meal.


	22. Chapter 22

**A few points: 1) Sorry about the delay - been ill! 2) There have been some delicious reviews again... to my good friend "lizz," I'd recommend "Surprise" by HDUC. 3) The end of this chapter may leave a few of you going, "What, again?" but rest assured, I'm sensitive to your plight and will make every attempt to update tomorrow! No guarantees, but I'm going to give it a whirl...**

**And 4) This is the second-to-last chapter. Sigh. I've had SO MUCH fun with this! You folks have kept me on the edge of my seats with your reviews at least as much as vice versa! :-)**

* * *

**22**

She knew very well that there was a dishwasher just to her left, but she chose to wash the dinner plates by hand because the sound of running water covered up the sound of her crying.

From the door behind her, the Doctor tried saying her name twice, but she didn't hear. At last, he walked up to the counter beside her and reached out, turning off the water.

She looked up at him, and then looked him over. He was completely assembled - suit buttoned like usual, tie knotted at his throat, shoes laced up, hair manageably mussed. If not for the deeply forlorn look in his eyes, there would be no hint that fifteen minutes ago, they had been together, decidedly unbuttoned, un-knotted, unlaced and mussing each other in a wholly unmanageable way.

"I need to show you something," he told her.

"What is it?"

"My findings."

She wiped tears away from her eyes with the shoulder of her tee-shirt, but more came. "Can't it wait?" she asked, her voice still unstable. "I'm not really in any shape to be doing science at the moment. I just want to be alone right now." With that, she turned back to the sink and opened up the tap again.

He promptly shut it off. "No, it can't wait. It has to be now."

"Why?"

"It will make sense when we get to the lab. Come on."

He moved toward the door, and disappeared. Reluctantly, she left the dishes as they were, dried her hands and followed.

* * *

He flipped on the lights in the lab, and she walked in a few seconds behind him.

"Guanine, cytosine adenine and thymine," he began, as though lecturing to a hall. "Four. Simple, direct, easy to remember. They exist in your DNA, and in mine."

"Mm-hm," she responded, crossing her arms over her chest, and leaning on a counter.

"But I have fifteen others as well, nucleotides which, for the most part, are not found anywhere in your solar system," he told her. "In fact, a number of them were only found on my planet."

"Okay."

"To be exact, six of them were only found on my planet," he explained. "Gallifrey, planet of the Time Lords. Now, we weren't the only species in the universe who can regenerate, but we _are_ the only species I know of that has regeneration encoded in the DNA as a standard feature for every individual. Other species have environmental factors, different psychic tricks, et cetera... but we, Martha, we are unique."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because. Those six found only on Gallifrey... much like me, their existence isn't rooted entirely in the here and now, at least not when combined properly. They each have an unstable, oscillating makeup that allows them to be changable both all four dimensions. And, they combine only in one place in the whole universe: in my DNA at the locus of regeneration."

"Oh. Okay, I think I see."

"It is the genetic code that causes every cell in my body to change when I'm about to die. It is part of a sustaining life force, Martha, that causes this glowy gold stuff to exude from me, and try to repair me, when that happens, or when I'm ill or burnt or whatever."

"Did you just find this out?"

"No, I've been thinking it over for weeks, wondering if I can recombine those six without jostling something else. Actually, this is biology taught in grammar school," he said, waving her off. "Now, under the microscope, by examining the sample you took when I had rhinovirus, one can clearly see that I am experiencing a _deficiency_ of that particular 'cocktail' which in and of itself is not big news. What _is _big news was more of a revelation..."

He began moving about the lab, pulling things out of a drawer. He extracted a rubber tourniquet, some alcohol swabs, an adhesive bandage, a cotton ball and a blood-storage tube. He laid them out on a chrome table and took off his jacket. He began rolling up his sleeve, and Martha took the hint. She stepped forward and pulled on some gloves, unwrapped the swab and prepared to take blood.

As she carefully searched for a vein, he asked, "What would you say is the most basic thing that keeps the universe running? Don't think lofty. Think... opposite of lofty."

She pushed the tiny needle into his flesh, and opened the small clamp on the tube and blood began to flow slowly into the receptacle. "I dunno," she said absently. "The will to survive?"

"Too lofty," he told her. "Or rather, what I'm looking for is, how do we sentient, physical beings _respond to_ the will to survive?"

Her eyes darted up to his. "Procreation?"

"Yep: sex. It generates heat, fervour, _ardour_, Martha... and it literally generates life, and allows _all _life to _re_-generate. I mean, the universe is a complicated place to be sure, but without that good old love and lust and passion at the basic level, the whole thing would die out, except for, perhaps, the amoebae."

She pulled the needle out of his vein, clamping it expertly, and then she bandaged the site.

"Great, thanks," he said. "Now look." With that, he pulled the computer keyboard toward him and adjusted the screen so she could see. "This is that sample that's sick with a cold, but the DNA is what we're looking at. See here, on the helix? This is the locus - you've looked at it before. These strands represent that cocktail that codes for regeneration. Notice, there aren't very many of them."

"Okay, got it."

"I didn't see it the first few times we looked at them because, they're _not missing_, they're just depleted. I reckon, it wouldn't be enough to allow me to regenerate, it would be just enough to not let me die straight away. And they are deteriorating... see the degenerating code here? These other strands are what's left of what used to be there..."

"Lovely."

"Now, look at this sample, just after the last time we were in Amsterdam," he said. She looked, as he pointed out the strands on the screen. "There are a few more, but nothing to write home about. No degenerating codes, so that's good news, there's evidence of replenishment."

"Right."

"But now," he continued, and with a few key strokes, another view of the sextuple helix came into view. "Look at this. This is from a sample taken yesterday morning. Do you see how many of those strands have replenished?"

"Yes! I do!" she exclaimed, actually pulling the screen closer. "Oh, my God!"

"I know! The cocktail has replenished to twenty per cent, whereas, the highest it ever got before was, as far as I can tell, perhaps nine per cent!"

"Before..."

"Before being with you."

She drifted sideways onto a stool and sat down. "Wow. Really, Doctor?"

He gestured to the screen. "DNA profiles don't lie. Want to check the sample we took just now?"

She nodded. He found two thin fibreglass slides in a drawer, and a dropper, and carefully put a few specks of the fresh blood between the two slides. He put them into the proper port of the computer, and a new image came up.

"There it is. We're at twenty-six-point-eight-two per cent now. The cocktail is replenishing... and it's all coming from you."

"Are you serious? My... _love_, or whatever it is, is actually _repairing_ your DNA?"

"Yep. Not just fulfilling a hunger which will re-occur. Remember last night when I said I'd been all wrong-headed about the whole thing?"

"Yeah."

"I said that because I realised that up until then, I had been looking at the regeneration problem and the _hunger_ as two separate issues, two separate things that went wrong in the Lazarus pod. But they are one! And I don't know how I didn't see it before!"

Her face lit up as she realised what he was saying. "So, you're saying... the Lazarus pod gave you a deficiency of these nucleotides..."

"Yeah, probably because they don't occur in this galaxy and the machine didn't know what to do with them... either that, or Lazarus was trying to remove all emotion from the equation to make the human entity stronger, and, well, _that _never works out well..."

"...and those nucleotides form a 'cocktail' as you call it, that becomes and abstract life force, part of the code for regeneration, and it's rooted in the kind of heat that manifests from a will to survive, and a hunger to be with one another... et cetera, et cetera."

"Yes."

"And because of that deficiency at the locus of regeneration, it gave you a _hunger_ for that cocktail."

"Yes."

"Oh, my God, Doctor! That makes so much more sense! How _didn't_ you see it?"

"I was too busy looking for short-term solutions."

"Yeah, so, speaking of which..."

"Well, I'm glad you asked. I've estimated that in order to feel sated, and not to get all grumpy and monstery, I'd need at least ten-to-twelve-per cent replenishment of the cocktail, which would still still not allow me to regenerate, but at least allow me to feel as though I have _some_ of it in me, up and running. But what I was getting from Laura and Jana and the others... it wasn't much. It would replenish two or three per cent at best, and begin to fade within twelve hours. That's why, a few days later, I was a beast again. With them, the best that could be said was that I just wasn't dying. But..."

He smiled and walked slowly around the table. She was still seated on the stool. He took her hands.

"...what _you_ give me," he continued. "Is not only so pure and so distilled that it gets me high and addicted, but it is so strong, that it sustains. You gave me almost a seven per cent boost this evening, Martha."

"And that pervades your whole body, every cell? All of your very DNA?"

"Yep. Like I told you before, it's what happens when I regenerate. _This _kind of energy flows through my whole system and changes everything - that's the nature of it, that's what it's meant to do. And Martha, you are the only one who has a chance of giving me full replenishment in a decent amount of time. At five to seven per cent per go, I could have my regeneration back in a couple of weeks - and that's only if we limit it to once a day. As you pointed out last night, love, I don't know _anyone _else in any city or any universe who could do this for me."

"So, if we continue..."

"I will be cured, Martha. Only I didn't want to tell you unless I was sure. I wasn't one hundred per cent sure until just now, when we looked at the most recent blood sample," he told her.

"And the hunger will be gone?"

"Yes."

"And the high?"

"Yes."

"You won't need me anymore," she said meekly, swallowing. "You won't need what I can give you."

"But I will... that's what I started to tell you tonight..."

"Doctor, wait," she told him. "What I said still stands. Don't say you love me. You have no idea how you're going feel when it's all over. I don't want you to get your feelings up, and me to get my hopes up, only to find that you are, as we have said, addicted to the thrill and/or in love with the _idea_ of me."

He groaned. "Oh, Martha, where to begin..."

"Don't begin, Doctor. Or rather, don't continue."

"What?"

"I will do anything I can for you, anything to help you, anything to make you comfortable. I will happily save your life - I would even give my own life to do it. But let's not call it more than what we know it to be, okay?"

His face fell, and then fixed into a stubborn expression. "As you like."

"Let's just enjoy the next few weeks. We'll call it a fling. We'll shag to your DNA's content, and we won't discuss how it makes us feel. We'll just _feel_, okay?"

He swallowed hard and stared at the floor. "Okay."

"And then, once you have everything fixed, back in place, we'll give it another two weeks. If you still feel like discussing it with me at that point, you can. If not, just don't say anything, and no harm done. At that point, whatever you decide to do, I will agree that you have your wits about you."

He nodded reluctantly. "Fair enough."

"Are you sure? You don't sound convinced."

"I get to be cured, and I get to be with you," he conceded. "If that's all I can hope for right now, I'll take it."

"Good," she said.


	23. Chapter 23

**Boo hoo! Last chapter! This story was so much fun to write and one of the easiest! And certainly, the reviews have been the best in all of my fanfiction "career." This speaks very well of you, that you are so invested in your favorite characters, seeing them do the right thing and that everyone does right by them... it's why I write! I'm so glad you've all stayed with me! Thank you!**

**And now, get ready for some serious sappy endings!**

* * *

**23**

Taking readings from the latest finger-pricking, he could see that after ten days, his regeneration "cocktail" was at ninety-eight per cent. This was probably more than enough now to ensure that, provided a death didn't occur uncommonly quickly, and if things proceeded as they usually did, he could probably regenerate without too much trouble, if he absolutely had to. He noted that for the past few days, he'd been feeling less tired and the paper cut he'd got two days before from Martha's spiral notebook had healed straight away. The effects of Martha's special brand of ardour were taking hold faster than the Doctor had anticipated, though he wasn't surprised, particularly.

But, if he wanted to guarantee that there would be no diminishment, that there would be no chance that they would be in this boat again, he'd have to have the full one hundred per cent - it's what would be needed for the DNA re-shaping to take complete hold, and cast off any other possibilities, as evolution had done so many generations back.

And so, he knew that one more even mediocre night with Martha would do the trick - though, no night, morning, afternoon or anything in-between with Martha had ever been mediocre. He'd be cured. After all the sneaking about, all the sniping, making excuses, dodging bullets, testing and cursing, it would finally be over and life could go back to normal.

Obviously, part of him did not want to go back to normal. In fact, most of him did not. Back to normal meant that he'd have to give up the most intimate side of his relationship with her, at least for two weeks, possibly forever.

But he knew she had been right to put him off. He _was_ rather addicted to the high she gave him, and there was no empirical way to tell whether he was truly in love with her at this stage, or just enamoured of the rush.

In theory, that is.

In theory, she was right. In practise, however, who could prove love empirically anyhow? And, the Doctor knew himself, and he'd known love. He knew where he stood.

But he understood her trepidation, and had agreed to give it two weeks after the cocktail had been replenished.

Briefly, he contemplated dragging it out a bit longer, getting another few days of unadulterated Martha, but he knew... the sooner they began their two-week trial period, the sooner that period would be over, and they could start anew together. Also, he knew that the best way _not_ to begin anew together was with more lies.

So he shut off the lights in the lab, and found her in her bedroom, folding laundry for the both of them, and watching one of the _Lord of the Rings_ films as she did so.

"Hi," she chirped as he came in. "How many of these identical light blue dress shirts do you own, exactly?" She gestured to a pile that already consisted of five.

"Erm," he answered, clearing his throat uneasily. "Like forty, I think."

She chuckled. "Okay. 'Cause these are just the ones I have found in this room over the past week or so. And there are a couple of tan ones, too, in the other pile."

"Oh, that reminds me, I found your purple hair-tie tangled in my sheets this morning.

"Oh yeah, I looked for that after my shower," she said. "Wondered where it had got to."

"Listen, there's something you should know," he blurted, without much ceremony at all.

Martha stopped in her tracks, folding the arm of a black tee-shirt. Her eyes opened wide, and she asked, "Oh, God, what is it?"

"We're at ninety-eight per cent," he told her. He wasn't sure how he should act. Showing happiness might be interpreted as a rejection of her, showing sadness might betray the fact that he'd almost rather have _her_ than his regeneration abilities back. So he had said it with an impassive face.

"Already?" she asked, also impassive. "Very interesting."

"Yes," he sighed. "So, that means..."

"Maybe one more go?"

"Officially, yes," he told her. Then he ventured to say more, though he knew it would make her uneasy. "Though unofficially, I was still hoping..."

"Shhh," she interrupted, gently. "Just leave it. We'll talk about it in two weeks."

"Okay," he agreed, reluctantly, though internally he was thinking that she was lucky that he hadn't said what he'd wanted to say over the past ten days. Anytime they were together, he'd had to hold back. He'd had to keep himself from touching her during moments when they were clothed and upright. And when they weren't, he'd bit his tongue to stop himself telling her he loved her, that she was sexy and brilliant and he just wanted to consume her.

"So, let me finish folding here, and then... did you have some adrenaline-inducing adventure in mind for us?"

"Nothing specific, apart from..."

"Okay. Well, maybe we can find some trouble to get into together. Just give me ten minutes."

* * *

The Doctor had contemplated having their day's adventure be something "romantic," the sort of wining and dining women say they want. Well, some women. But he had done plenty of that lately, with lesser women, and it had got him very little in the long-run. Besides, Martha was one to be set apart from the rest, no matter in what group one wanted to place her.

And so, unsure of how else to proceed, he let their "last go" pass with no more than the usual external emotion. Although, the idea of finality, something dying (even though this was literally a life-affirming operation) pervaded him, the whole time. It felt fantastic as it always had, but in truth, the high had dissipated days ago. The depth of her love was palpable in all of the normal, human ways of affection and desire, but the intoxicating effect, the Doctor reckoned, had been the result of an initial overdose. Since then, his body, his cells, had become acclimated to the onslaught. He told himself, he should have known this would happen, since the "hangover" he had experienced after their first time together had been fairly easy to dispatch.

Their "last go," though, turned out to be their "second-to-last go," as they woke in the morning and had a fairly protracted encore, both of them unwilling to let go. They pretended the night had never finished, acted like they hadn't just slept for eight hours, that they were just revving up again for good measure, after a brief nap. For a time, the Doctor had hope that this meant he wouldn't have to wait another two weeks to talk to her about it, or maybe they wouldn't have to talk about it at all, that perhaps they could just fall into something real and wonderful, and all for each other...

But that evening, after a three-planet jaunt saving a family of Winged Harraclons whose wings had been clipped seven hundred years ago just before they were separated and sold into slavery, Martha simply said "Good night," and she retired to her own quarters. There was no particular emotion in her eyes, no looking back at him, and certainly no invitation. For a horrible hour, he sat alone in the console room, ostensibly deleting unneeded data, and wondered if their roles had now switched entirely. If so, how had Martha managed to live with him all that time? How had she survived loving him as much as she did (and as he now loved her), knowing about his sexual exploits without clawing out her own eyes?

This point of view made an extraordinary woman even more extraordinary, to his way of thinking.

And yet, somehow he found the wherewithal to get into his own bed and fall asleep. His last thought was to be thankful for the plight of the Harraclons having exhausted him, so he wouldn't have to think about Martha anymore tonight.

Naïve, indeed. Because of course, the first night in two weeks without Martha by his side brought dreams of her - of every part of her. He woke with a start, in a cold sweat, frightened but aroused, and more sure than ever...

* * *

Their days were, as they should be, filled with mad dashes and near-deaths, and he managed to keep his angst at bay. He reminded himself that this was how Martha had felt for months upon months, with no guarantee of any solace from him, ever. And she wasn't even shagging strangers behind his back! She had simply asked him to wait a fortnight - he could do that, right?

But the nights... she was in his mind and wouldn't go away. Approaching him, walking away. Her being and consciousness wrapped around him, or just out of reach. He saw her appear from nowhere, and also fade away. They were weightless and together as one like a ball of energy, and they were two cold bits of black rock on opposite ends of the universe. He saw her appear from nowhere, or disappear. He saw her naked, or wrapped in fur. She was in the throes of ecstasy, and in horrible pain. He watched her come, and saw her die. She consumed and she gave life.

And each morning he woke earlier and earlier, certain that he would never sleep again, and even more certain that he would never be able to take fourteen nights in a row.

At nine minutes past three a.m. on day six, he reached his limit.

* * *

She woke when he opened her bedroom door.

"Hello, lovely."

"Hello yourself," she replied, groggily.

He took this as not-a-rejection, and walked toward the bed slowly, contemplatively.

"Is everything all right?" she asked.

"No," he answered.

"What's going on?" She struggled to sit up and wipe the sleep out of her eyes with her knuckles. "You aren't ill are you?"

"No, all of that rubbish has passed," he told her. "Thanks to you."

"Then what's wrong?"

He sighed. "Now listen. I know it's only been six days, and you asked for fourteen. And I know that you're going to try and interrupt me when I start talking, but I need you not to do that, okay? I just need you to hear me out."

"Okay," she replied, concern in her eyes.

"I have been _aching_ to get through this two-week trial period, or whatever it is. I'm over nine-hundred years old and I can travel in time, and yet getting through fourteen days on my own time stream is too bloody much to ask. Ironic, eh?"

"I've never had occasion to think about it, but... yeah."

"I've never been a particularly patient man, Martha. I've always been a rogue that way. The Time Lords were patience personified, patient to a fault. It's why I couldn't stay, it's why..."

"Doctor, I honestly don't mind a bit of meander when it's noon, but it is currently just after three o'clock in the morning, and I'm knackered."

"Well, I told you, I want this to be over, in the worst way. I'm absolutely champing at the bit to tell you that I love you, and I'm not just a juicehead."

She smiled in spite of herself. "Okay, fair enough."

"Do you love me?" he asked, quite bluntly.

"You know I do. I always have," she answered with a lump in her throat.

"Then, why are we bothering with all this? I don't need that trial period."

"Doctor..."

"You said you'd hear me out," he interrupted. Then he paused to gather his thoughts. "Martha, I stopped _feeling_ the effect of your ardour after a week of our being together. I knew that what you were giving me was still nourishing because I could see it under the microscope. But the high - it was gone quite a while back. Once the nucleotides at the regeneration locus recombined and the cocktail reached fifty per cent capacity, the intoxication faded away."

She gaped at him for a few seconds in her sleepy haze, then asked, "Why didn't you say?"

"It took me a while to notice, actually."

With an exasperated laugh, she wondered, "How could you not notice?"

"Because there was so much else to be had, to be enjoyed, in those moments, Martha!" he exclaimed, moving closer to her, taking her hands. "That was when it started to get exciting because I could finally see you, feel you, and not through a haze, or some sticky veil of bliss. I started to get high on something else, something regular, human, accessible..."

She continued to gaze at him, and he had trouble reading her expression.

So he did what he did best: continued talking.

"Martha, us being together... making love, it wasn't in vain, or just for fun or whatever - it served a purpose. It has cured me. You have cured me. I can _literally _live again because you've loved me so well."

"Very well-put."

"But you've also cured me of something else."

"Don't tell me: that roadblock of thinking you'd never love again."

"Okay, I won't tell you," he said with a smirk. "Clearly, I don't need to 'cause you already know."

She sighed. "When exactly did the high go away?"

"When I reached fifty per-cent, or thereabouts," he shrugged. "I can't say _exactly_. Over two or three days, a layer of magig smoke lifted, and then it was just... you and me. No weirdness. No high. No palpable nourishment... that all got relegated to where it should be, as abstract, Time-Lordy stuff. The simple stuff, what I can feel and hold and want... that's love."

She suppressed a smile, because she wanted _so badly_ to believe him, and have him crawl into bed with her right now, and take her and never stop.

But something inside her was still sceptical - she didn't know why. She didn't _really_ believe the Doctor would lie to her about the intoxication having faded away two weeks ago. She didn't _really_ believe he'd wake her up in the middle of the night, feigning torment, playing games with her. But what if it was still just some kind of craving come back home to roost?

"Doctor, have you bothered to check your nucleotide levels since we had our last go?"

He let out a mild frustrated expletive. "Martha listen to me. I'm not a child. When I look at you, I want to... just..." He reached out to her with both hands and stopped for a few moments. Then he went the rest of the way, grabbed her cheeks and kissed her with all of the gusto he felt. Their lips and tongues entwined, and both moaned a little, just in release of the pent-up emotion they had both been carrying about. They had both missed their quality time together, to be sure.

When the kiss broke, she asked, "You want to what? Shall I interpret _that_ as the ending to the sentence?"

He smiled. "Yes, more or less. Except that so many things happen to me when I look at you. I am in awe of you, of how _well _and completely you have loved me, even when I did not deserve it."

"That's the great thing about love. You don't need to deserve it," she offered weakly.

"Well, thank heaven, because after all the rubbish I've put you through, even before all this regeneration business began... Martha, the last six days, I have been, more than I ever cared to be, in your world. I see how you have lived. Running with me, troubleshooting with me, soaking in adrenaline and fire and... and I can't just grab you and kiss you, or pull you into a broom cupboard and have my way with you..."

"When did you think of doing that?" she asked loudly, with a reluctant smile.

"In the control complex yesterday with the Aeode creatures," he said. "I reckon if there had been time, I might have lost my resolve."

"Blimey, Doctor."

"The point is, you've been putting me through something that isn't a tenth as bad as what I threw at you, and I couldn't even survive it for two weeks, let alone for six months! How did you not kill me in my sleep?"

"I thought about it, but decided it might be counterproductive if I wanted you to ask me out on a date someday," she said dryly, with a smirk.

"You've been insulted and cast off in the worst way, been ignored, lied to, and had guns pointed at you. Anyone else would have turned and run, but you stayed and helped."

"Well, I did try to run once, but I reckon I wasn't that serious about it," she commented, meekly staring at the blankets in her lap.

"See?" he said, squeezing her hands. "God, you must love me."

"I do," she whispered.

"So much, you pretty well put my lights out once," he reminded her with a smile. "And then brought them all back! How could one little person be so big? You put up with so much, and still had enough love leftover to save my life with it!"

"Yeah..." she mumbled.

"I look at you, and I just _want _you, Martha, that's all there is to it. I _want _everything you are. I want to... grab you so hard that you could break, and kiss you untill you have no breath, and _own _you, almost. I want to be covered with you! I want to squeeze, and drink, and dive in..."

She made a sound, something like laughter, something like a sob. And the tears indeed began to fall.

"Sorry, there just aren't good words for it. Except... I don't need _time _to tell me what we both know. If being in awe-inspired reverence of your capacity for love, and wanting to catch fire whenever I can't touch you, doesn't mean that I'm in love with you, then I give up, because it means that I don't know what love is anymore."

And at that point, he felt a certain finality. He had no idea what else to say or do. He felt that this was the end of the line. He felt completely exposed. He felt that if she put him off one more time, asked him for more contemplation, or indeed asked any more questions, he might turn to ash right then and there. Once again, he knew how she must have felt hundreds of times in his presence, times when he was largely oblivious to the power he held. He winced at the thought of it.

"Okay, then," she said, clearly, evenly.

"Okay, what?"

"Crawl in."

His question got stuck in his throat for a moment, and his eyes opened wide. "In - in bed with you?"

"Yes," she replied easily. "Unless you'd rather talk about it more."

"God, no."

"Then crawl in, Doctor," she said, peeling back the covers, taking a chance on doubts cast off. "And make me feel it."


End file.
